What Reinforces Your Concrete Canoe?
24 Sep
If the winner of the Daytona 500 drives on Goodyear tires, you expect to hear about it.
If Usain Bolt, the world’s fastest human, races to his gold medals in Puma shoes, you expect the folks at Puma will let you know about that, too.
So is it all that surprising that the folks at Chomarat, a South Carolina-based composites company, are highlighting the fact that the winners of the 2008 ASCE National Concrete Canoe Competition used a Chomarat product in their boat?
We guess not, but it did get our attention.
We learned the little known fact via the NetComposites news site — we read it regularly, really we do! — which noted that four of this year’s concrete canoe finalists, including the title-winning University of Nevada – Reno, used the Chomarat product C-Grid, which reinforces concrete with carbon fibers. The champs “applied light prestressing cables with C-Grid while other teams combined spun woven carbon fiber fabric and/or and glass fabric together with C-Grid to fabricate their canoes,” according to NetComposites.
We know exactly what they’re talking about … sort of.
Now, if the very idea of a concrete canoe itself is puzzling, know that the annual concrete canoe competition is sponsored by the American Society of Civil Engineers with the goal of challenging the country’s top engineering students. Concrete canoes, are judged in four categories: overall appearance, a technical design paper, an oral presentation, and paddling competitions.
Next year’s national championships will take place in Tuscaloosa, Alabama on June 11-13.
