Capstone Project

For my capstone project I worked with a team to look at the material and manufacturing feasibility of a microcellular plastic canoe. Below is the executive summary taken from the paper that we submitted for the class.

These results were presented to the class as well as our sponsors for the project using a poster format along with interim presentations with powerpoint.

For this project the goal was to develop baseline properties for a few different processed Microcellular ABS plastics to determine the feasibility of using this material to make a canoe or kayak hull. Ideally we would have a thick enough skin to give good flexural strength and impact strength, along with a lighter core to reduce the weight of the canoe. This idea was used to develop a common canoe hull material Royalex, which is a multilayer composite which is then laminated together. The implementation of a material that is foamed and has a similar structure would be much more cost effective to manufacture and therefore create a larger profit for the companies selling the canoes and make light weight canoes more affordable for the customers.

Executive Summary

Over the last ten weeks we have continued to evaluate the manufacturing and material feasibility of making a Microcellular ABS canoe hull. This project was started in the fall of 2008 by William Day with the idea of making a light weight canoe, similar to Royalex® canoes on the market today. Using the technology of microcellular processing we believe that it is feasible to make a canoe hull out of Microcellular ABS.

Through research and previous work done by William Day we came up with three main goals for the end product. The canoe should have similar characteristics to Royalex®; this includes rigidity, tensile strength and impact strength. The canoe should also have similar durability to products on the market. Along with these properties the possibility of making a lighter weight base should be explored. In order to show manufacturing feasibility we wanted to look into thermoforming and find ideal conditions.

Throughout this project we have done material characteristic testing of different density Microcellular ABS plastic with varying skin thickness’. We believe that we have found a good density and suggest the exploration of thicker skins. The results from the testing have shown a lot of potential for a Microcellular ABS canoe. The results with comparisons to Royalex® and linear, mid-density polyethylene are tabulated below.

*50% density Microcellular ABS foamed after 3 day desorption was used because of best results

** No information was provided

These results show that our Microcellular ABS has similar tensile strength to our competitors. We believe that with more time and experimentation the flexural strength can be increased with a thicker skin. The end product should also be lighter than the Royalex® canoes. We have also done finite element analysis’ to determine where extra support would be needed in the canoe aside from the base ABS form.  We suggest supports at each end of the canoe as well as around the rim of the canoe. The specifics are discussed throughout this paper.

We also recommend the continuation of this project to further show the feasibility of a Microcellular ABS canoe. Further exploration of skin thickness and density needs to be conducted to idealize the material. Thermoforming of a prototype also needs to be conducted and tested to idealize the manufacturing process.