Concrete Projects, Real Engineering Experience
December 18, 2025 / Lexi Velte / Tags: Civil Engineering (B.S.C.E.), American Society of Civil Engineers, ASCE, concrete
Dr. Claude Villiers doesn’t believe learning should stop at the lab door. In his Civil
Engineering Materials course, that means trading a traditional concrete lab for something
more ambitious: hands-on projects designed for real-world testing at the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) competition in March. This semester, three student teams have taken him up on the challenge.
“All of [the projects] have a set of regulations they have to follow in terms of size, construction, what they can put on it, what they cannot put on it. Then they leave it up to you to use your engineering ability and critical thinking to execute and win the competition,” said the engineering professor known to students simply as Dr. V.
They leave it up to you to use your engineering ability and critical thinking to execute and win the competition."
Creating these concrete items might seem simple, but there are unique challenges with each one. Concrete is a mix of materials (coarse and fine recycled aggregates, admixture and cement) and paste (tap water acting as a glue to provide strength). It’s notoriously weak in tension (pulling or stretching forces) but very strong in compression (squeezing forces), so students must really think through their designs. For example, a concrete cornhole board needs to withstand being repeatedly hit by bean bags thrown from a distance. Without the right mix, the board can crack.
For the competition, Adam Blais, Hunter Hart, Jackson Allaire, and William Kalvin have taken on the challenge of building a concrete cornhole board.
Will compared creating the concrete mix to baking: “It’s like putting cake batter into a pan that you have to put into the oven, but our oven is a big tub of water that lets the concrete cure so that it remains strong and flexible.”
They’ve faced a few challenges so far, including figuring out how to create the six-inch hole in the form. Adam explained how they first looked at piping but found that most pipes have an outside diameter that was beyond their allowed tolerance.
“We chose to cut little circles out of the plywood and screw them all down,” he said.
For the competition, Adrian Boguslaw and Ariela Galvan are designing concrete golf
balls meant to be played. The pair created a silicone mold shaped like a regulation
golf ball, then began experimenting with concrete mixes made from water, cement and
aggregate. Once poured, each ball must cure for 28 days before testing begins. From
there, it’s a cycle of trial, failure and refinement as they adjust the mix to improve
performance.
Their biggest challenge comes down to water.
“If we add more water, it’s going to fit into the mold more easily and be a better shape, but if we add too much water, it’s not going to be strong enough when we play with it, and it’s going to break,” Adrian said. “That’s the biggest challenge of our competition — doing a lot of testing with the concrete and trying to find the perfect mix for the golf ball.”
On a third team, Caleb Tedesco, Patrick Niedermair, Max Young, and Charlie Wolfa are
working on the prestressed mini-beam project. In place of traditional steel cables,
the students use guitar strings to create tension inside of the concrete beam.
Caleb explained how it works: “The guitar strings are going to be pulled before the mortar mix is poured into the mold. When it dries, the guitar strings have a force inside of them. Then we’ll test the beam to see if they make a difference in its design.”
The testing will determine the ultimate load capacity of the beam.
All of the students agreed that their projects are helping them develop their problem-solving skills, as they are applying concrete to fields where it’s not necessarily the best material for the project.
“This project does teach you a lot of skills you’re not going to learn in the classroom,” Hunter said. “Overall, the process is solving problems and coming up with solutions. That’s what an engineer does, really.”
As they prepare for the ASCE competitions, these students are learning how engineers think, test, and innovate in the real world.
