Legasea-UCSD 2 Man Submarine
The Biennial International Submarine Race, which takes place at the US Naval Surface Warfare Center in Bethesda Maryland is a competition in which groups of students from around the world build and race "wet" submarines in a 3,200 foot long Navy testing basin. The one or two man submarines are built from scratch using fiberglass hulls and powered using a pedal driven propeller system.
After hearing about the UCSD submarine club competition on campus, I joined and was fortunate enough to be involved in the program through the design, construction and racing of the vessel. That year, the team upped the ante by deciding to race in the 2 man sub category, which increased the complexity as it had to be created in two pieces as well as fit two divers. The initial step was developing the model in CAD, which was great as it allowed me to get my feet wet in Solidworks and feel comfortable in sharing my ideas amongst a team. The actual build involved countless hours of laying sheets of fiberglass on a foam mold, machining custom parts in our school machine shop for the drive train, and assembling it all together under a tight deadline. Once it was built, we were able to use my family's motorcycle trailer to haul the sub across the country and race amongst teams from around the world. The results of the race justified the work we had put in, as despite competing against teams with larger budgets, we still placed 3rd in the two man sub category.
Being involved in the club was a fantastic for applying the concepts I had been learning in school as well as for gaining experience in a real world scenario of building something while working as part of a team. Taking a project like this from concept to reality and dealing with all the problems and unexpected hurdles, helped give me a better overall technical understanding and set of tools to tackle future engineering related challenges.