The competition this year was held on April 10, 2016 at Cook’s Pond in Denville, NJ. Unfortunately this year, teams in the Metropolitan regional competition were not able to race. This was determined by the town of Denville due to the cold water conditions.  However, the team was still able to go to competition and take part in the swamp test and the presentation portion. TCNJaws made it through transportation, which has been rather difficult in the past.  Below is the suspension system that the team created to cradle the canoe and absorb any possible shock that might occur during transportation.

During competition, TCNJaws passed the swamp test. This test requires the team to place their canoe in the pond, fill the inside with water, and completely submerge the hull. If the hull does not float back up and break the surface of the water the team cannot participate in the race portion of the competition. As you can tell we were all very excited that we passed the swamp test.

The team placed fourth overall at competition and is excited to pass down their knowledge and experience onto next year’s team.

Please click on the link to see the video of our 3D printed model in the flume:

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When we 3D printed our hull design, we put it through an extensive flume test to try and calculate the drag that was exerted on the hull. We initially calculated the drag to be 0.13 lbs as our theoretical value and then we had a measured experimental drag around 0.09

The design of the hull is well underway.  The team decided to develop three different hulls to test to choose the most optimal shape. These designs were developed after extensively researching nationally ranked canoes from previous years. Different aspects of the canoe were also studied to determine how each constituent enhanced speed, efficiency, buoyancy, and maneuverability. Aspects such as the placement of the longest beam, the beam to length ratio, and the radius of the rocker were different for each design.

These three hulls were created using Bentley’s Maxsurf® Modeling program and were analyzed using Maxsurf® Resistance. Our goal is for each design to be printed using the 3D printer so we can measure drag forces and observe overall movement through the water. The first design which can be seen below in Figure 1 was redrawn using Solidworks® and is in the process of being 3D printed.

Figure 1: Hull Design 1

The mortar cubes from our first mix design were tested on 10/27. Results are shown below: