UBC Concrete Canoe 2014

Kryton is excited to be sponsoring the University of British Columbia (UBC) Concrete Canoe team as they compete in this American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Concrete Canoe Conference Competition, held April 24 - April 27 at Oregon State University. The UBC Concrete Team is a student run club that designs, builds, and races a canoe made of concrete.

Kryton is a silver sponsor of the team, and our Krystol products have been added to the concrete mix as the only waterproofing solution, to ensure the canoe stays dry against hydrostatic pressure.

The UBC Concrete Canoe Team is a very new, 100% student run design team with 20+ members. They are comprised of members in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year Engineering registered with the ASCE. The team allows students to work collaboratively with each other to complete the design with the constraints given in the rule book.

The Concrete Canoe Competition is a concrete design competition for Civil Engineering Students. It involves:

- Design floating concrete (density less than water)

- Cast concrete canoe

- Submission of a design report

- Submission of design papers, concrete samples, reinforcement samples

- Structural analysis on the hull design

- An oral and poster presentation on the design

- Team races (4 people co-ed; 2 people men, 2 people women)

The UBC Team’s design goals were to use a lightweight concrete; to use local products and resources; and to create a high quality precedent for future teams.

Structural analysis was performed by estimating the demands of the canoe, followed by an analysis of the internal stresses as a result of these demands.

In the absence of 3D-modeling, it was necessary to reduce the problem to a complex enough model to capture the structural behavior, while being simple enough to analyze.

This approach was broken down into three processes:

1. A good model of the canoe was established to determine the demand
2. Load demands were applied to a simplified model to find the internal stresses of the canoe
3. The analysis was translated in order to set the minimum material properties for the concrete mix design

The team contacted Kryton in early October of 2013 and went to our Vancouver based Head Office to discuss the mix design for concrete. Kryton supplied the team with two 5 kg pails of our Krystol Internal Membrane (KIM-HS) Concrete Waterproofing Admxiture to use in their mix design.

Prior to 2014, the team completed the mix design for the concrete with a final density of approximately 990 kg/m². In late January 2014, they constructed the canoe formwork, and finally cast the canoe at Armtec precast facilities.

We look forward to an update from the team next week!