Ware Lab Teams

The Ware Lab is located on Stanger Street, near Lavery Hall and Surge Space Building. It is the center of many different undergraduate engineering design teams that represent Virginia Tech in competition. Here is an inside look into some of the design teams:

Steel Bridge and Concrete Canoe

Two teams that represent civil engineering, Steel Bridge creates a scaled-size bridge from structural steel, and Concrete Canoe creates a full size, functional canoe using “a lighter-than-water concrete mix”. AISC, the American Institute of Steel Construction, makes the rules and design parameters for the Steel Bridge Team, and ASCE, the American Society of Civil Engineers, does the same for Concrete Canoe.

Baja SAE and Formula SAE

Representing mechanical engineering, the Baja and Formula SAE teams go through the full design and production process to manufacture and eventually race their all-terrain vehicle, or their high-performance race car. Teams compete at each SAE event to hopefully have their design chosen by a made-up company looking for different specifics each year. Additionally, the Formula SAE team has incorporated an all-electric vehicle as well as their traditional combustion engine car.

Design Build Fly (DBF)

Aerospace engineers, this one’s for you. Just as the name suggests, engineering students design a remote control plane, build it, test it with analysis and wind tunnel testing, and fly it into competition! This competition is hosted by the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), Cessna, and Raytheon.

Human Powered Submarine

This team competes in the International Submarine Races (ISR), which takes place every other year. Marine and Ocean engineering come into play through designing and building of this human powered sub, judged on speed and innovation. The first submarine built by the team was dubbed Phantom 1, and the current submarine is Phantom 8, being revamped for competition.