Rice Engineering Team Makes a Splash at Boating Competition

A group of Rice mechanical and electrical engineering undergraduates sailed to success in a solar boat building competition last summer.

Solar Splash, the world championship of solar and electric boating, is an international intercollegiate competition in which entrants design, build, and competitively test manned solar-powered boats. Now in its eighth year, the event is sponsored by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The team of six Rice students took fourth-place honors in the competition, which concluded June 24 in Buffalo, New York. It was the first time a team from Rice participated in the competition.

Their entry was the senior design project for a team that included recently graduated mechanical engineering students Fernando Acosta, Sandra Anuras, Tanya Hanway, and Chris Tracy and electrical engineering seniors Rajiv Bala and Ryan Hammer. J. D. Wise, lecturer in electrical engineering, and Robert Cunningham, lecturer in mechanical engineering and coordinator for the department’s senior design projects, advised the group.

With a boat designed, built, tested, and driven by the team, they picked up a list of honors: They were first in knot tying, first in visual display, second in endurance, third in qualifying round, and fifth in sprint race. They took fourth place overall and the top rookie award.

Cunningham said that success in the endurance competition was particularly sweet because that phase of the contest “required good equipment and skilled conservation of power supplied by both batteries and solar cells. It also contributed the largest number of points toward the final score.”

The grueling four-hour endurance race consisted of two two-hour races, Cunningham explained. The first test was made up of two heats. The top performers in the two heats met for the championship race, while the lower performers competed in a consolation race. “We won our heat,” Cunningham said, “but were beaten in the championship race by the winner of the other heat, an eight-year veteran.”

The competition was tough, and some of the rival boats were designed and built by professionals, such as the U.S. Coast Guard Academy’s entry, which was designed by a naval architect. Except for many of the power system components—solar cells, motor, power controller, etc.—which were purchased as complete subassemblies and integrated into the craft, the Rice team designed and built their boat, as well as the power and drive systems. The hull, steering, drive system, and other parts were built from scratch.

“During the [Mechanical Engineering 407/8] course,” Wise said, “they did all the things a design team is supposed to do: They researched different hull configurations, built scale models of the most promising ones, and tested them in the wave tank. They studied other teams’ boats, talked with vendors, and did good old engineering analysis to develop parameters and establish sources for the drive train and steering.”

Cunningham had high praise for the Rice students’ entry. “I saw no team that matched the Rice team with a complete engineering approach in all phases of the design and construction process.”

More information about Solar Splash 2001 can be found at www.solarsplash.com/.

—Ann Lugg