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Before the fall semester began, Tara Sheedy ’06 (Latham, N.Y.) knew very little about solar energy and even less about boating.
Now, she can offer intricate explanations of hull design, speak knowledgeably about solar panels and batteries, and tell anyone who’s willing to hear about the peculiar properties of polyurethane foam. By late June, if all goes well, she’ll be piloting a solar-powered catamaran in Solar Splash, an intercollegiate solar boating competition sponsored by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).
Sheedy is working with nine teammates, who also began the year with little experience in solar energy and boating.
“We started completely from scratch,” Sheedy says, explaining that team members chose the project for their senior engineering design “capstone” project.
David Cipoletti (Barrington, R.I.) the team’s unofficial leader, says the team spent much of the fall semester researching boat design to determine how to compete most successfully in the competition, which will be held June 21-25 at University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.
Cipoletti says the team’s members, who all graduated this May with B.S. mechanical engineering degrees, divided into a “hull group,” responsible for designing and building the hull, or float, and a “power group,” responsible for the boat’s motor, solar panels, and batteries. Hull group members include Sheedy, Cipoletti, Aly Dewji (Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania), Patrick Wilson (Chittenden, Vt.), and Alexander Lassman (South Windsor, Conn.). Power group members include Mark Wishart (Pittsburgh, Pa.) and Dogan Yiginer (Cigli/Izmer, Turkey), who are working on the motor; Arno Alarcon (Delmar, N.Y.), who is responsible for controls; Tobias Heineck (Bellport, N.Y.), who is responsible for propeller selection; and Joe Narkevic (Ambridge, Pa.), who’s handling solar panels and batteries.
Cipoletti adds that the hull group quickly decided on a catamaran style, which has two parallel hulls connected by a frame, because the students’ research showed it would handle the competition’s endurance portion best. The competition will also test the boat’s maximum speed and maneuvering abilities, and the team will be judged on its technical report and the boat’s visual display, workmanship, and overall quality.
Team adviser Leonard Van Gulick, Matthew Baird Professor of Mechanical Engineering, says team members are working entirely on their own, building “real-world” engineering skills in the process.
Sheedy and Cipoletti say that the group designed the 10-foot-long boat using several computer programs, including Autodesk Inventor and Math CAD. While designing the boat was uneventful, manufacturing it has been a bit more difficult. The hull group’s attempt to use heated wire – often used to cut foam – to slice the dense polyurethane foam hull material nearly ended in disaster.
“It got really messy,” Sheedy says, explaining that the heat melted the foam and group members found themselves waving away smoke.
“We’re cutting all the foam mechanically now,” Cipoletti says.
Cipoletti is optimistic about the team’s chances in the competition.
“I think what’s great about our team is we have a lot of really smart people who look at the project in a lot of different ways,” he says. “We’ve learned what we need to do, and we’re getting it done One of the best things about the project is that we’re getting to build something. We can see what we’ve designed on the computer come to realization.”
Cipoletti is a member of the Delta Upsilon fraternity and the snowboard race team and works as a math tutor. He also has served as a first-year orientation leader, spent a semester studying in Brussels, Belgium, during his sophomore year, and interned last summer at Northeast Motion Inc. in Smithfield, R.I.
Sheedy, a former member of the varsity cross country and track teams, served an unofficial internship at Plug Power Inc. in Latham over the summer and during the January interim semester.