Civil and Materials Engineering Teams

UBC Concrete Canoe gives members a chance to experience real-world challenges and engage in unique engineering projects. Members have the resources, mentors, and opportunities to get involved with a large variety of activities, both technical and practical. From laboratory testing and computer modeling, to networking and budget management. If you love paddling, we’ve got plenty of that too! Each year the team attends two competitions, one in northwest America and one in Canada. They design, test, build, and ultimately race a canoe made entirely of concrete. For those of you who are wondering, yes! It floats!

 

UBC Concrete Toboggan allows students to apply what they’ve learned in the classroom to civil, mechanical, electrical, and materials design. The team is made up of students across all disciplines of engineering. The students work together to build a toboggan and compete annually in the Great Northern Concrete Toboggan Race (GNCTR). GNCTR is Canada’s oldest student engineering design competition. We are proud to be consistently awarded for our sustainable and innovative design at competition. Whether you’re interested in sustainable concrete mix, structural analysis, steering, brakes, or sensor development and IoT, Concrete Toboggan provides the opportunity to learn new skills and meet new friends. Visit our website or Instagram to learn more about our team.

 

UBC Seismic constructs a structurally sound and architecturally pleasing balsa wood structure to resist seismic loading. Our goal as a design team is to bring together students with interests in structural and earthquake engineering, construction practices, and architecture by competing in the annual Undergraduate Seismic Design Competition (SDC). The team is affiliated with the EERI UBC Student Chapter.

 

UBC Steel Bridge designs, fabricates, and constructs a steel bridge defined by the competition rules published anew each year. We compete in three competitions every year against universities across North America hosted by the Canadian Institute of Steel Construction (CISC) and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). Our performance is measured by assembly speed, bridge weight, deflection under 2500 lb load, and display. Members have the opportunity to perform a variety of technical tasks such as structural analysis and drafting using AutoCAD, S-Frame, and SolidWorks – programs which were given little exposure in class. If you are looking to develop your soft skills, we also provide experiences with networking, project management, and finance.

 

UBC Volcan designs and crafts beautiful blades by hand, from forge design to final assembly! They are set to participate in the biennial bladesmithing competition hosted by The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society. This competition challenges student teams from around the world to use their knowledge of materials to design and forge a blade of their own.

UBC SmartCity believes that major technological breakthroughs have led to economic, environmental, and social restructuring of a select few cities but that adoption is lagging behind due to a sparsity of engineering talent. This team is building the next generation of talent through hands on, project-based work which ends in open source software or demonstrations of their skills at competitions like MIT Energy Hack and Translink’s Open Call for Innovation.