Cardboard Boat
Design Brief
Teams design and construct a one or two-person vessel made from cardboard. It must be maneuverable and stay afloat for approximately 600 yards. The boats will be timed from the moment they leave the lagoon dock to the time they return, with the fastest time winning the competition.
Solution
For this competition, my team constructed a two person vessel to navigate the expanse of water. The design of this boat was based on the design of canoes and kayaks. The front of the boat allows the water to easily slide around the boat with little resistance while the back allows water to flow around the rear easily. Reinforcement is placed inside of the front and rear compartments to provide strength to the structure. The hull of the boat is shaped to allow water to flow easily while also keeping the boat sturdy in the water. The body of the boat provides area for two people to man the boat and volume to provide buoyant force to keep the boat above water.
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This competition taught me many skills regarding aquatic design and team development. Our team began by brainstorming designs for a successful boat. Once a designed was picked, calculations were done to determine the buoyancy of the designed boat. After all of the designs were created, Our team created a scale model of our boat. This taught me the importance of creating a scale model to better imagine the full boat. We moved to the shop to create the full boat out of cardboard, again delegating responsibilities between members. I took the role of creating oars to provide propulsion. This experience taught me more about creating prototypes in the design process. I was unable to attend the final testing of the boat at the competition, but our boat did sink, instilling the importance of throughly designing the prototype before testing.
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This is the completed boat before it began its maiden voyage.
This image is a computer model of the cardboard boat our group created.
This image shows sketches of the cardboard boat I created in my engineering note book. Dimensions are included to provide detail to the sketch.