Built for Speed: Engineering students build racing boat

Pirates have always faced challenges on the sea.

For eight engineering students at East Carolina University, that challenge means designing and building a boat for the Promoting Electric Propulsion (PEP) boat racing competition April 14-16 in Portsmouth, Virginia.

The event includes more than 45 universities competing in three divisions. ECU has entered the uncrewed open division, in which the boat will be controlled remotely to run a mile-long course, turn around and head back to the finish line.

Engineering students Trent Byrum, right, and Blake Isla work on the hull of a boat in February. They are part of a group of eight engineering students working to build a boat for the Promoting Electric Propulsion boat racing competition April 14-16 in Portsmouth, Virginia. (Photos by Ken Buday)

“The goal is to win,” said Patrick Sprague, a senior from Greenville. “Last year, the fastest time was 5 minutes and 24 seconds, which is almost 25 mph. We want to win, so we know we need to be maybe closer to the 35-mph range to try to get the course completed in less than four minutes.”

It’s an ambitious goal for students who have never entered the competition before and admit they had little knowledge about boats before they started on the project.

“Some of us have prior knowledge of boats, but I don’t think any of us have ever gone this far in depth,” said James Miller, a senior from Snow Hill.

The rules of the competition require the boat to carry 60 pounds. Total battery power is limited to 55 1/2 volts, but other than that, competitors can create the type of craft they believe will win.

Students split into two teams, one to create the hull of the boat and the other to handle the propulsion and other systems.

“We have done an absolute deep dive into both of those categories and meticulously picked every aspect of this boat,” Miller said. “We’ve researched different hull shapes, different hull materials, what they’re good for, drag and speed. As far as propulsion goes, we’ve had to look into electric motors, lots of stuff with propellers and cavitation, batteries, all sorts of things. This is a completely new area for all of us.”

The students did not sail into uncharted waters alone.

“We are in a unique position sitting in eastern North Carolina. There are a lot of resources to reach out to for premier boat crafting,” said Blake Isla, a senior from Wilmington. “There are a lot of good local places for outreach. Of course, a lot of our families have done boating or been connected with boats.”

They also relied on what they’ve learned in class, everything from thermodynamics and fluid mechanics to 3D modeling and simulations.

Engineering students discuss the propellers for a boat they are building for the Promoting Electric Propulsion boat racing competition last week in the Science and Technology Building.

“I think it’s been a great learning process,” Miller said. “I think we’ve all been learning and growing with this together since it’s such a new thing for ECU.”

Molly Lasure, a senior from Greenville, believes the experience of building the boat within the $7,000 provided budget is an example of the types of projects the students will encounter in their jobs upon graduation.

“Just the experience of talking about what we learned in class and applying it to a real-world scenario has been really fun,” Lasure said. “And then also getting to talk to different people who have had different boating experiences, just getting to pick their brains and figure out what they know that can help us out the best, has been really good.”

Sponsored by the Office of Naval Research in partnership with the American Society of Naval Engineers, the competition challenges university students to design, build and race electric boats, with the goal of fostering innovation while developing a future workforce for the Navy and Marine Corps.

Under the guidance of Dr. Randall Etheridge and Jeff Foeller as faculty advisors, the students have worked for months on the boat, including a test float in the Trustees Fountain in Wright Circle. The craft is a bold combination of fiberglass, carbon fiber and epoxy resin, measured to the exact centimeter and created through complex mathematical equations that only engineers — and Pirates — who hear the call of the sea understand.

“We went through trial and error, models and modeling, and just learning new skills, really,” Sprague said. “I guess that’s kind of what engineering is all about, learning new skills and continuing to learn.”

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