THE FLAMING EAGLE“WE ROW BOTH WAYS”

2015 DESIGN PAPER (UPDATED 2/26/2015) –GEORGIA SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY

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TABLE OF CONTENTSGeorgia Southern University is a public research university with an academic history marked by distinction in teaching, scholarship, and service, and is located in Statesboro, Georgia. The University's stamp of personality is a culture of engagement that bridges theory with practice, aiming to extend the learning environment beyond the classroom, and while promoting student growth and success. Georgia Southern has had a Civil Engineering Technology program for over two decades, and also been involved with the Regents’ Engineering Transfer Program (RETP). Over the past four years, Georgia Southern has been in the process of transferring from a CET program to a Civil Engineering program, and has finally become accredited during this school year.

Table 1: 2014 Concrete Properties

Unit Weight (pcf) Compressive Strength (psi)

Approx. TensileStrength (psi)

Structural 55.8 Wet; 41.5 Dry 1028 215

Finishing 66.8 Wet; 52.8 Dry 1902 292

Georgia Southern has competed in the ASCE Southeast Student Conference for several years, and this is the second year our ASCE chapter will compete in the concrete canoe competition. Although our canoe from last year was unconventionally made with limited resources, we have boosted our efforts for design and efficiency with this year’s canoe, THE FLAMING EAGLE. We have faced many challenges and overcome many obstacles, but no matter the result, we are going to make big waves come competition time. We hope our unique process of designing and fabricating The Flaming Eagle will be useful to future competitors.

Table 2: 2014 Canoe Properties

Weight 345Length 17 feetWidth 28 inchesDepth 14 inches

Nominal Thickness 1 inchColor Gray

Table 3: 2014 Reinforcement Materials

Continuous Reinforcement Fiberglass Mesh

Fiber Reinforcement

Nycon PVA RECS15 (8 mm),

Nycon PVA RFS400 (19 mm)

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The 2015 Georgia Southern concrete canoe team was able to start a semester earlier, in the Fall of 2014, than our previous year’s submission. In order to oversee the overall timing and project effectively, two captains were selected, as well as two co-captains. These four team members aimed to motivate, guide, and organize the other students, and were involved in most every aspect of the project. Furthermore, from the four main team members, team leaders were selected to head up canoe hull design, concrete mix design and testing, canoe mold design and development, and canoe construction.

Financial assistance was received from the Civil Engineering (CENG) department, local businesses were queried for donations, and fundraiser nights were held at local restaurants. Through team fundraising efforts, $1,200 was acquired to supplement department funding.

Team leaders were responsible for purchasing materials relating to their area of the project. Due to the teams ability to reuse materials from last year (e.g. Styrofoam molding and aggregates), the team was able to start right away when a design was formed. Group leaders met on a daily basis while the entire project group met bi-weekly during the design phase. Each team member was able to put forth ideas that the team would vote on and check for time and cost effectiveness. As we entered the construction phase team leaders met every day to discuss and prepare for the week ahead. Construction of the mold, canoe, wooden infrastructure, and transportation apparatus were the main topics discussed. In total, 145 man hours were spent on the concrete canoe project. A break-down of which tasks these hours went into by percentage is given in Figure 1.

ORGANIZATION CHARTFigure 1: Project hour break-down

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Project Captains: -Mitchell O’Neal (Senior, ASCE 1st year, 1st year Concrete Canoe)-Anthony Lopez (Senior, ASCE 1st year, 1st year Concrete Canoe)

Co-Captains:-Jonathan Melton (Senior, ASCE 1st year, 1st year Concrete Canoe)-William Mason (Senior, ASCE 1st year, 1st year Concrete Canoe)

Project Estimation team:-Zachary Strickland -Anthony Lopez

Hull Design team:-Bowen Jones (3D Modeling)-Dylan Hightower (Cross-section Modeling)

Mold Construction:-Dylan Hightower (Cross-section Projecting, Music Coordinator)-Sonny Peetoom (Mold Cutting, Frame Fabrication)-Mitchell O’Neal (Foam Cutter Design)-Jonathan Melton (Mold Cutting, Carpentry)

Mix Design:-Anthony Lopez -Zachary Strickland

Canoe Construction:-Mitchell O’Neal-Sonny Peetoom-Will Mason-Bailey Webster-Kenneth Givens-Dylan Hightower-Jonathan Melton

Transport:-Matthew Hodell-Benjamin Pierson

Design Report: -Mitchell O’Neal -Anthony Lopez -Jonathan Melton

HULL DESIGN

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Our approach to the initial design of the concrete canoe was to copy the design of a regular fiberglass canoe and fine-tune the shape mechanics to match our desired specifications. We took note of the ‘cutting power’ of varying canoe shapes while searching for possible materials used by past concrete canoe mix designs from other competitors. Due to our lack of experience compared to other schools, we approached this competition with not the will to win but the will to better ourselves. Our previous submission in 2014 was taken into account when designing The Flaming Eagle. What we came up with was a sleeker design and more efficient mixture for our concrete. Even when constructing our new pride and joy, team members and advisors who participated in the concrete canoe were surprised by improvements we were able to make within one year. Two major improvements can be seen in this year’s canoe design.

The first of these unique improvements is literal copying of your standard fiberglass canoe. The flat bottom that is usually seen on your basic canoe was used to improve the canoe’s water cutting ability come race time. Compared to last year, where our team used a dihedral hull design, our stability decreased and our turning speed increased.

The second improvement of our hull design is the canoe thickness. We ran into a number of complications when trying to decrease the weight of our canoe by slimming our thickness. The primary obstacle was to find a mix design that had a smaller unit weight and was stronger than last year’s mix. With help from Zachary Strickland, who worked on last year’s mix design, Anthony Lopez was able to tweak and improve the mix design for this year. These two design features help to manage wetted area of the canoe and water drag while keeping the boat competitive yet operational. On our hull design, an initial height of 14” was selected in a conservative manner in order to make sure there would be enough of the canoe sides above the water line. Due to cost effectiveness and limited time we were only able to fabricate one canoe while banking on our theoretical experimentation instead of any hands on testing. We realize the difference between calculating and actually testing a design, but we were confident in our outcome.

DEVELOPMENT AND TESTING

Figure 2: A standard flat bottom canoe

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The primary guiding goal of the mix design team has been to develop a concrete mix design with a low unit weight less than that of water, without greatly diminishing the concrete’s strength and ability to withstand the rigors of canoe transportation and competition. Since GSU has never brought a canoe to the regional conference before, there were no past school mix designs to base our design upon. Furthermore, although recent student research has been conducted on extremely high strength concrete, no current students had experience developing extremely lightweight concrete mix designs.

For a materials baseline to begin developing a mix design with, Type I Portland cement and silica fume were selected as cementitious materials. Portland cement was selected due to it being an industry standard, while BASF SF 100 silica fume was selected as another cementitious material due to us already possessing a supply to begin working with, and more significantly for its low specific gravity of 2.2. Also, silica fume provides additional strength, cohesiveness, and durability.

Nycon PVA fibers were selected as secondary reinforcement to provide additional strength and cohesion for the concrete mix, and eventually an 8 mm strand size was selected to serve as fine fiber reinforcement and a 19 mm strand size to serve as coarse fiber reinforcement.

After researching lightweight aggregates, Poraver recycled glass aggregate was determined to be a widely used and reputable lightweight aggregate and was selected as part of our materials baseline. Desirable qualities included the wide selection of available particles sizes, its impressive lightweight (specific gravities ranging from 0.4 - 0.9), its ability to resist high pressure loads, and its sustainability implications due to it being made of post-consumer recycled glass. 0.1 - 0.3 mm, 0.25 - 0.5 mm, 0.5 - 1.0 mm, and 1.0 - 2.0 mm particle sizes were selected to allow versatility in experimentation with various mix design proportions. Larger aggregate sizes are beneficial to the mix design due to their lower specific gravities and ability to add necessary volume to the concrete mix, but aggregate particles larger than 2.0 mm were determined to be too coarse for desirable workability, as well as too large to adhere to the mesh reinforcement.

For admixtures, Supercizer PCE was selected for use, helping to reduce the larger amounts of water needed when using above average silica fume amounts. The Supercizer PCE contains 100% of the active ingredient of Supercizer 5, a high-range water reducer, providing maximum water reduction results. It was also selected to increase workability and flow without depending on additional water, as well as to increase strength and to improve durability. Super Air Plus was selected for use as an air-entraining admixture, for the purpose of increasing and evenly distributing air content, as well as improving workability and flow.

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After toying with different mix design proportions using the above baseline of materials, it was determined that another lighter weight cementitious material was needed to offset the amount of silica fume being used. Student researchers at GSU had recently been using silica fume to increase concrete strength, but they had been using no more than 25% by weight of cementitious materials, and our mix had silica fume comprising upwards of 40% of the cementitious materials. Also, as mentioned above, the silica fume required much more water than Portland cement, so reducing silica fume amounts would help reduce our water content while maintain a still workable mix. VCASTM 160 pozzolan was chosen as a third cementitious material for several reasons. For one, it exhibits 10% lower water demand than silica fume, and can replace cement amounts up to 40%. Its low specific gravity of 2.6 helps to achieve the goal of a lightweight mix. Also, the pozzolan is a green construction material made from recycled industrial by- products, also helping to reduce carbon emissions created during the manufacture of new cement.

Due to lack of concrete testing equipment, only tests for compressive strength were able to be performed. Three tests were performed on the structural mix design, and the results are shown in the table below. Using last year’s mix design as a reference, the mix design team was able to come up with a more effective mix that was both stronger and more buoyant. All compressive strength tests were done according to ASTM test standards. Tension strengths were estimated using the following equation (Somayaji):

f t=6.7×( f 'c)0.5

Table 4: Concrete Properties Tests (Structural)

Test Unit Weight (pcf) 7-Day Compressive Strength (psi) 7-Day TensileStrength (psi)

1 55.80 865 197

2* 40.82 294 115

3 45.47 1024 214

* The sample was still too wet when the test was performed and is not a good indicator of the true results.

CONSTRUCTION

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In order to most effectively construct our canoe on our limited time frame, we decided to use a female mold and male mold both made of dense Styrofoam Polystyrene. We are quite proud of our ability to utilize past materials in our construction of our mold. To construct the canoe mold we began with multiple sets of oddly shaped rectangular prismatic pieces of Styrofoam that were left over from last year’s male mold, the dimensions of these Styrofoam pieces varied greatly but we were able to cut them to the desired sizes we wanted. Our cutting process was quite simple. We heated a guitar string with a basic direct current car battery charger that had varying amp settings from 2 amps to 10 amps. The electrical resistance within the wire material created enough heat to cut through the Styrofoam similar to cutting through butter.

One of the best experiences our team faced was the cutting of the Styrofoam. We broke the canoe design into multiple cross sections and then drew corresponding cross section areas onto opposite sides of our previously cut Styrofoam pieces. Dylan Hightower, a junior here at GSU, proposed we use a projector to draw the cross sections.

Dylan Hightower and Jonathan Melton tracing a cross section.

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Projector setup for cross section tracing.

Once we had drawn our cross sections we proceeded to cut out the area of Styrofoam highlighted in blue in the picture above. We did this using the same method of heating a guitar string and slowly tracing the blue highlighted area, as seen below.

Mitchell O’Neal and Sonny Peetoom cross section cutting.

The next step was to set all finished cross sections parallel to check for inconsistencies within the mold. This was done for both the female mold and male mold. When we did find faulted areas we set to sanding down the Styrofoam until uniform to cut down on drag for the finished canoe.

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Cross section cuts line up Sanding the female mold / frame buildAfter creating our molds we needed some way to keep the finished product together while the concrete was being poured and during the curing phase. We decided on building a wooden frame that can be seen above and below. This frame would also be used for transport to Chattanooga when the time came.

Wooden frame to hold the mold

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The concrete was mixed using a mortar mixer due to the fine nature and material properties of aggregates and other materials used. First, a 0.25” thick layer of finishing mix was applied to the flat bottom of the canoe. We then laid our mesh tension reinforcement from bow to stern. Next, a 0.75” layer of Structural mix was applied to the rest of the canoe body. This was followed by another 0.5” layer of Structural mix to cover three 10’ pieces of #3 rebar that were set in place to prevent shear stress yielding during moving in and out of the canoe come race time. For each batch of concrete, approximately 10 team members were present to apply the concrete to the mold, spreading it out evenly using trowels. During this process, the concrete mix design team was weighing out and mixing the next concrete batch. We were successful in pouring our entire canoe in one pour that lasted approximately three hours.

After finishing applying concrete to the mold, we put the male mold back in to let the concrete set for 36 hours. After setting we removed the male mold and filled the concrete canoe with hot water and covered it with burlap cloth to keep the entire canoe moist then added a plastic tarp to trap heat of the exothermic reaction as the concrete cured.

We allowed the concrete to cure for a minimum of 28 days before removing it from the mold. We applied any finishing touches to the now dry concrete by means of sanding and decoration of exterior.

Reinforcement before pouring

Initial pouring of finishing mix

Structural layer pouring

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PROJECT SCHEDULE

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DESIGN DRAWING

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APPENDIX A-REFERENCES ASCE/NCCC. (2014). “2014 American Society of Civil Engineers National Concrete Canoe Competition. Rules and Regulations.” <http://www.asce.org/uploadedFiles/Concrete_Canoe/Rules_and_Regulations/2014%20ASCE%20NCCC%20Rules%20and%20Regulations.pdf > (Feb. 25, 2014).

ASTM. (2009). “Standard Test Method for Bulk Density (“Unit Weight”) and Voids in Aggregate.” C29/C29M-09, West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.

ASTM. (2012). “Standard Practice for Making and Curing Concrete Test Specimens in the Field.”C31/C31M-12, West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.

ASTM. (2012). “Standard Test Method for Compressive Strength of Cylindrical Concrete Specimens.”C39/C39M-12, West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.

ASTM. (2012). “Standard Terminology Relating to Concrete and Concrete Aggregates.” C125-12, West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.

ASTM. (2012). “Standard Test Method for Density, Relative Density (Specific Gravity), and Absorption of Coarse Aggregate.” C127-12, West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.

ASTM. (2012). “Standard Test Method for Density, Relative Density (Specific Gravity), and Absorption of Fine Aggregate.” C128-12, West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.

ASTM. (2006). “Standard Test Method for Sieve Analysis of Fine and Course Aggregates.” C136-06, West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.

ASTM. (2012). “Standard Test Method for Density (Unit Weight), Yield, and Air Content (Gravimetric) of Concrete.” C138 /C138M-12, West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.

ASTM. (2012). “Standard Test Method for Slump of Hydraulic-Cement Concrete.” C143/C143M-12, West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.

ASTM. (2012). “Standard Specification for Portland Cement.” C150-12, West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.

ASTM. (2010). “Standard Practice for Sampling Freshly Mixed Concrete.” C172-10, West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.

ASTM. (2012). “Standard Test Method for Air Content of Freshly Mixed Concrete by the Volumetric Method.” C173/C173M-12, West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.

ASTM. (2010). “Standard Test Method for Static Modulus of Elasticity and Poisson's Ratio of Concrete in Compression.” C469-10, West Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.

Somayaji, Shan. Civil Engineering Materials. 2nd. Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2001. Print.

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APPENDIX B-MIXTURE PROPORTIONS

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APPENDIX C-BILL OF MATERIALS

Material Quantity Unit Cost Total Price

Portland Cement, Type I 73.10 $0.12/lb $8.77BASF SF 100 Silica

Fume 43.84 $0.40/lb $17.54VCAS160 Pozzolan 58.26 $0.39/lb $22.72

Super Air Plus 1.05 $6.48/lb $6.80Supercizer PCE 1.37 $6.00/lb $8.22Nycon RECS15 1.47 $15.00/lb $22.05Nycon RFS400 1.02 $15.00/lb $15.30

Poraver ® 0.1 - 0.3 mm 23.00 $0.70/lb $16.10Poraver ® 0.25 - 0.5 mm 37.93 $0.70/lb $26.55Poraver ® 0.5 - 1.0 mm 36.90 $0.70/lb $25.83Poraver ® 1.0 - 2.0 mm 33.80 $0.70/lb $23.66

1/2" plywood 4$32.00/

sheet $128.00#3 Rebar 3 $5.46/bar $16.38

Wood: 2" x 4" 8$18.00/

piece $144.00Fiber mesh

reinforcement 34 $0.78/sq.ft. $26.52Total Cost = $508.44

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