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"Tulane
University"
(20th place overall; 11th in paper; 17th in presentation;
15th in product)
Presentation:
 Tulane
made their debut this year and the team went with the theme: “The smaller the
school, the better the boat.” They elected to go with a single presenter dressed in
business attire to kick the presentation category off in the early morning
session.
The presentation began by following the design report.
The team played a video showing the hydrodynamic design as they explained
that the analysis was performed using a combination of Rhino and other
commercially available software.
Then the team explained how they fed their hull geometry
into ANSYS to perform their structural analysis.
After showing another video to showcase how the boat moved
through the water, they brough the presentation to an abrupt conclusion.
Judges Comments/Questions:
The projectionist joined the presenter on stage as the
question session began:
- You
outsourced your ribs to a shipyard for fabrication.
Do you think that this was in the spirit of the competition?
- Did
you look at your mixture proportions to make sure that they yielded one
cubic meter?
- Please
explain two of the terms that you used in the design report, namely
“hogging” and “sagging.”
- Did
you consider where your paddlers would be located in your canoe during your
analysis?
- How
did you arrive at the factor of safety of 0.7 reported in your design
report?
- Why
did you look at just one loading condition with four paddlers in the canoe?
- What
is the significance of the logo that you used for your theme?
- Then,
the judges questioned the completeness of the drawings that were included in
the design report.
Commentary:
The graphics were good and the presentation was well
delivered. But it ended abruptly
and was a little too short. The team could have used those extra minutes to address
some of the things that they left out including construction, management, and
mix design. But considering this was Tulane’s debut at the national
level and they were the first team to take the stage, the team did quite well.
Product:
Canoe Name: T Boat
Length: 20.1 ft
Weight: 265 lb
Color: Gray
The canoe was asymmetrical and reinforced using either
one or two layers of a geo-grid. It
was the only boat to have a closed section formed by placing a thwart across the
middle of the boat. One of the
unique aggregates used to meet the C-33 standard was “lubriglide.”
Tulane commented that, “Their boat was built in a hallway barely twice
as wide as the hull.”
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