“So we sailed out to the sun until we found the sea of green, and we lived beneath the waves in our yellow submarine.”
Inspired by The Beatles, the Cal Concrete Canoe team crafted this year's entry, RadiCAL, out of a vibrant yellow concrete mix.
Peek your head into the sanding tent in the Davis Hall Lab and you'll find team members perfecting the graphics while singing along to Beatles' greatest hits.
Because the 2016 ASCE Concrete Canoe Competition rules dictate that no concrete stains can be used to create graphics on the outside of the canoe, the team produced all of RadiCAL's exterior graphics using multiple colored concrete mixes and vinyl stencils.
Last year, Berkeley's canoe, BEARea 51, successfully employed a wooden male mold. This year, the team ambitiously chose to construct a wooden female mold to ensure a smoother exterior surface.
Constructing a female mold is harder, but the team decided to go for it because the final product would be substantially better and there would be benefits for paddling as well.
The formwork was designed to seamlessly split down the middle, easing the demolding process. The team excluded epoxy, fiberglass, and eps foam in the mold construction, and this resulted in a completely compostable wooden mold for the first time in team history.
Because sustainability is a primary goal for RadiCAL, the team designed its mix to replace 60% of portland cement with equal portions of byproduct pozzolans: flash, blast furnace slag and vitreous calcium aluminosilicate.
The team heads to the University of Nevada, Reno for the annual Mid-Pacific Regional Conference on April 7-9. Hungry for another trip to Nationals, the competition is sure to be RadiCAL!
Go RadiCAL!
Go Bears!
Photo credit: Lillian Fan