Great Northern Concrete Toboggan Race team hits the road

By Richard Cairney

Edmonton—Nearly 40 U of A engineering students are taking part in the annual Great Northern Concrete Toboggan Race at Canada Olympic Park Feb. 8 – 12, with a futuristic-looking toboggan that should perform well in the fast lane.

The so-called Tron-boggan, named after the sci-fi movie theme the team has adopted, was running smoothly during tests runs leading up to the national championships.

“Our top speed last week was 38 km/h,” said team co-captain Andrea Badger, who is in her final year of environmental engineering. Given that the top speed at the 2011 national championships was 55 km/h on a steeper hill, she added, the Tron-boggan should be competitive in the speed category on the slopes at Canada Olympic Park.

Concrete toboggan races began during the 1970s, with engineering schools from across the country meeting annually to compete for national supremacy. Students design and build a concrete toboggan weighing no more than 300 lbs. Teams are judged for sled design, technical presentations and speed and braking.

Last year, the U of A hosted more than 400 engineering students from across Canada for the national championships—and was featured on CBC television’s Rick Mercer Report.

While the GNCTR is fun, it is also a legitimate engineering challenge demanding that students put all their expertise into the project. Safety is a major consideration, with regulations requiring working brakes and roll bars. Aaron Zidichouski, a mechanical engineering student who co-captains the team, says precision is of paramount importance in ensuring the sled is safe.

He says by performing a finite element analysis on the roll bar’s frame before building the sled, the team knows its drivers are protected in worst-case scenarios.

“We build a computer model of frame and give if the same weight properties and geometry the sled will have and we place loads at specific points on the frame,” he explained. The computer software highlights stress concentrations on the frame, letting the team know where it should reinforce the frame.

Both Zidichouski and Badger say time spent on the team has enhanced their engineering education.

“If I weren’t on the team I wouldn’t know about finite element analysis,” said Badger. “I have a better understanding of what other engineering disciplines do and I’ve learned to be creative with concrete—I learned more about concrete by being on this team than I did in class.”

Zidichouski says taking part in a student group sharpens time management and project management skills, and working with a team of engineers teaches team members about the capabilities of diverse engineering disciplines.