Two SWJTU teams, consisting of ten students from the Programme of Civil Engineering at the School of Civil Engineering, the SWJTU-Leeds Joint School and the Mao Yisheng Honors College, won the grand prize and third prize respectively at the 2020 International Concrete Dragon Boat Competition held at the International Campus Zhejiang University on October 17, 2020. 

Supervised by Profs. Zhang Rui, Wei Kai, Wang Ruoyu and Li Jianghuai at the School of Civil Engineering, the grand prize winning team is named “Leishen” and composed of Zhou Guanren, Guo Qicheng, Yao Sizhe, Li Runyu and Wang Yijia, and the other one, the third prize winner named “Huoshen”, include Qu Shujun, Chang Mingyu, He Chengbo, Pang Yingying and Cai Shuhan.

The Competition aims at the development of students’ innovation capability and cross-disciplinary and creative thinking. At the predesigned speed race, participants are required to remote control the concrete dragon motorboats which should be 80cm~100cm in length and made of lightweight concrete reinforced with steel or composite fiber. Each team should make its own boat in advance according to the specifications and send it to the Organizer. Then, on the very day of the Competition, the contestants compete via live streaming by remote controlling the boats off site.

A total of 31 universities partook in this year’s competition, including Zhejiang University, Dalian University of Technology, Central South University, South China University of Technology, Hunan University, etc. in China, as well as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), Kongu Engineering College (KEC) and other overseas universities.

Teachers and the team members had within three months successively completed CFD analysis and design of boat body, material experiment, dragon boat manufacture, power system design, mechanical assembly, remote control training, design document preparation, display board design, art design, video recording and dragon boat transportation.

The concrete dragon boat competition was not only a challenge of the students’ competence in the making of concrete boat, but also a test of their technical know-hows in both civil and electrical engineering fields. After many discussions, the two teams decided to name their boats after the Leishenshan Hospital and Huoshenshan Hospital built in Wuhan during the epidemic, to show their respect for the construction workers and medical staff of the Hospitals. The team members completed the procedures of defense and demonstration, manifesting in a convincing way their innovation, creativity and design ability.