Wake N' Bake: Composite Wakeboard

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Design Goals

Reduce weight
Increase stiffness
Enable maneuverability
Include pleasing aesthetics.

As a benchmark, we used wake boards currently sold in the market and aimed to design a board with better material properties. Our wakeboard utilizes a Divinycell H core and infused layers of carbon fiber. The Divinycell H core exhibits a high strength to density ratio, while the epoxy infused carbon fiber adds increased stiffness, compared to the benchmarked polyurethane core and epoxy infused fiberglass. Some potential failure mechanisms our group researched were core deformation and delamination due to compressive forces, and shear of the core due to max shear forces occurring between the foot bindings. Unlike the composite goaltender hockey helmet, we utilized the VARTM (Vacuum Assisted Resin Transfer Molding) process to infuse our wakeboard. The final step in our process consisted of sanding the edges of the board and creating a gloss finish.