VOLUME 12, NO. 1     JUNE 1998

Project students discover that Holland is a real Dutch treat

f, in the not-too-distant future, the City of Rotterdam, Holland, adopts a plan to recycle building construction materials, the seaports in northwestern Europe are made more competitive, offshore oil platforms are better designed for the North Sea, and airplane manufacturers bypass aluminum alloys for something called GLARE 4, it may well be due in part to the efforts of students who spent seven weeks in Holland last fall participating in WPI's Global Perspective Program.

"A total of 10 students worked on three Interactive Qualifying Projects and one Major Qualifying Project at Delft University of Technology," says Richard Vaz '79, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of the Holland Project Program. Vaz, co-chair of Interdisciplinary and Global Studies, was the students' faculty advisor.

For their IQP, juniors Samuel Bradshaw, Jeremy Bragg and Christopher Lautenberger were commissioned by the Rotterdam Department of Public Works to work on a citywide project to investigate how to overcome the barriers inhibiting reuse of waste building materials.

Concrete contractors in Rotterdam rely heavily on the use of gravel from the nearby Maas River as aggregate for the production of concrete. The DPW is concerned about the environmental impact of this practice, says Lautenberger. According to Bragg, recycling construction wastes could provide the needed aggregate and lessen the need for river gravel.

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"We researched what shipping lines look for in a port and then determined the port's strengths and weaknesses."

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The students concluded that the best way to prevent waste in the first place is to build structures that can easily be recycled at the end of their usefulness. They recommended that the Rotterdam DPW use 20 percent recycled coarse aggregate in some new structures to showcase the benefits of recycling.

The IQP team of juniors Julie Rasku, Andrew Solitro and Joseph Zurkus investigated the factors that make a port successful in container transportation in the Hamburg-LeHavre range: these cities' ports plus those between them, including Rotterdam, Antwerp and Zeebrugge. "We researched what shipping lines look for in a port and then determined the port's strength and weaknesses," reports Rasku.

"The Port of Rotterdam, which handles the fourth largest number of containers in the world, has a fast, efficient transshipment system," notes Solitro. "It also has a short, deep-access route for good accessibility, which will become increasingly important as larger ships come in the container market."

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Benjamin Linnus, left, gets a close look at the floodgates near Rotterdam. Linnus was one of 10 WPI students who completed projects in Holland last fall. The team members are seen touring the floodgates in the other two photos along with Walter Massie '64 (in the WPI baseball cap), WPI's liaison at the Delft University of Technology.

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To remain the No. 1 port in Europe, the students recommend that Rotterdam expand to provide enough space to handle the predicted increase in the container market and offer a variety of less-expensive alternatives.

For their IQP, juniors Michael Euell and Vitaly Khmelnitskiy and sophomore Benjamin Linnus created The Designer's Guide to aid in the decision-making process involved in the design of fixed offshore oil platforms in the North Sea. The guide was compiled for the Offshore Technology Department of Delft University of Technology. The guide provides "rules of thumb" for designers of these platforms to be able to develop a preliminary design and a rough cost estimate for the structure.

Although it was written primarily for students, the authors conclude that the guide's structure and accuracy make it appropriate for the oil industry, which could use it to make preliminary estimates. "The most rewarding aspect of the project was interacting with people related to your project topic and gaining insight into the dynamics of industries and companies," says Linnus.

"This project wouldn't have been possible without the help of Professor Walter Massie, our liaison at the university," says Euell. Massie, who received his bachelor's degree in civil engineering from WPI in 1964 and his master's in 1966, taught the students about the oil industry and enthusiastically introduced them to Dutch culture.

Matthew Arner '98 completed an MQP in cooperation with Airbus Industries that focused on hailstone impact testing of GLARE 4, a fiber-metal laminate with superior fatigue and fire resistance that could one day replace aluminum sheeting in aircraft construction.

"We designed a test that accurately simulated a worst-case scenario hailstone impact with the Airbus A3XX experimental aircraft," says Arner. Damage to GLARE and aluminum specimens was analyzed after both were shot with synthetic hailstones. Neither GLARE nor the aluminum specimens exhibited surface cracks nor any other type of material failure.

The MQP marked a return to Delft for Arner, who completed his IQP there in 1996. He says he thoroughly enjoyed working in a lab with Dutch, Italian, French, German and American students. The most rewarding part of his project? "The cultural experience of trying to communicate on a technical/engineering level."

Ruth Trask

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