Student teams from Princeton, Washington College and the University of Alabama won their respective events at the “Promoting Electric Propulsion” boat races sponsored by the Office of Naval Research and the American Society of Naval Architects.
In six years, the electric boatbuilding competition has grown from a single university to 34 schools with more than 200 students participating in the five-mile races on Broad Bay in Virginia Beach, Va. Dr. Steve Russell, program officer, Sea Warfare and Weapons department, launched the competition with a colleague from ASNE, Dr. Leigh McCue, and Tim Cullis from the Naval Sea Warfare Center Carderock, after seeing a race staged by local hobbyists on Chesapeake Bay.
“It gave us the idea this would a good way for the Navy to get engineering students interested in electric propulsion, so we did it,” Dr. Russell said in a statement. “The goal is to create a pipeline of graduating engineers who have worked on a suite of problems that are currently issues within the U.S. Navy. They come out of school after having designed and built a boat like this, and learning about high power electronics, propulsion, hull design, cooling and boat stability — the naval architecture parts of it. So far we’ve hired many of them into the warfare centers and our industry partners.”
The teams of students came from schools including Princeton, Texas A&M and Washington College in Maryland. Russell said Washington College placed first, adding, “They don’t even have an engineering school. It’s just a couple of students who go to school near the Chesapeake Bay and they built a couple of very good boats.”
The competition includes manned and unmanned races. Though the competition with drivers is the most exciting for the students, the majority of the entries were in the unmanned competition.
Since its inception, the competition has helped recruit 44 engineering graduates to the Navy. Eleven others gained engineering positions with marine industry partners.
