Our Crowdfunding Groups
"As a team, we are proud to announce that we placed 4th in our regional concrete canoe competition. Thank you to all of our sponsors that supported us. A special thank you goes out to Mark Lamer and Taylor Layland for providing us with the support and guidance we needed this year."
The 2021 NAU Concrete Canoe Team
After almost 4 months of mixing, testing, remixing, and retesting, our canoe team has finally developed our final mix design! The final slump test can be seen in the photos below. This design is catered to be soupy, but has a high viscosity and cohesion to allow for the concrete to be applied using a shotcrete sprayer. To begin construction testing, 6 separate 16"x6"x5/8" forms were created to be able to test the flexural strength of the concrete, reinforcement, the shotcrete application, and a releasing agents. To cure the molds, a curing chamber was constructed with two humidifiers. This is done to prevent moisture loss, which will increase the overall strength of the concrete. Loosing moisture quickly can affect the final concrete product and finish. Once our test specimens cure for the necessary amount of time, we will then perform three-point loading tests to obtain our modulus of rupture. Please see below for photos of the testing forms and curing chamber along with a video of the shotcrete application.
Thank you to everyone who has donated as this would not have been possible without you. We will continue to keep you updated as we progress.
The PSWC host school, UCLA, has recently announced that this year’s competition will be held virtually. With this new change, the competition no longer requires a fully constructed canoe. Although this is disappointing to this year’s captains, we as a team have decided to use this opportunity to invest in our NAU canoe program. Along with the design of our canoe, a large focus of this year is our mentee program. By preparing underclassmen for what they may experience in future canoe competitions, we can ensure that the canoe capstone project will continue to grow and thrive at NAU. Your donation will allow us to invest in equipment and supplies that will benefit these future NAU canoe teams. On behalf of our canoe team and future members, we thank you for your donation.
The team has been creating mixes and concrete cylinders every Friday with the help of some of our mentee's! Once the cylinders have cured for 7 and 28 days, the cylinders are then ready for testing. Our team begins by taking the cylinders into the lab and crushing them using a hydraulic press. This tests the cylinders for the compressive strength as the press will continually apply pressure until failure. An example of this failure can be seen in the images below. Generally, in construction, concrete with a compressive strength of 4,000 psi is used and our team has been obtaining numbers close to that with our modified mix! Furthermore, our mix is roughly 2/3's lighter than the concrete used in general construction!! After each test, we take a step closer to obtaining our final mix for this year by making slight modifications to each trial. Thank you to all that have donated, we will continue to keep you all updated on our project’s progression.
We've launched our project website. As a requirement for the Pacific Southwest Competition, we will use this resource to describe the details of our concrete canoe project.
https://www.ceias.nau.edu/capstone/projects/CENE/2021/ASCE_ConcreteCanoe/
$15 pays for a meal for a mentee (under-classman volunteer) during a long day of mixing and testing mix designs.
$25 pays for a NAU 2021 Concrete Canoe t-shirt for a team member or a mentee.
$50 pays for one set of mix design cylinders. For each varying mix option, 4 cylinders are made to perform testing.
This level will allow the team to purchase two new life jackets
$300 pays for a jobsite box for storing tools and other equipment used in construction of the canoe.
