Development of marine adhesives and markers for submersible research vessel ALVIN. New elective course, BS-2405, to be offered in September 2001.

Enrollment limited to 16 MMA students and 12-24 UCCRTS students.

Course credit: 3 credit elective = 2 hours lab + 2 hours lecture/discussion

Requirements: Any MMA student who has successfully completed two or more semesters of work at MMA with a 2.0 or higher GPA is eligible to participate. Juniors and Seniors at UCCRTS are eligible to take the lab portion of the course. There will be two UCCRTS groups, and each group will travel to MMA every other week. UCCRTS students may elect to take the entire course for college credit under the Dual Enrollment Program. Such students must provide their own transportation to the weekly lecture/discussions and be able to fit the course into their schedules. UCCRTS will provide weekly bus transportation to the labs.

MMA instructor: Dr. Sichel

WHOI partner: Dr. Tivey

Students will prepare and test marine adhesives and develop an applicator for undersea use. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution would like to develop an underwater marking instrument, paint applicator, or adhesive applicator which could be operated by the grappling arm of the submersible vessel ALVIN. When ALVIN is on an undersea geophysics mission, there is need for a method for making markings or attaching tags to rocks of geophysical interest.

Three student teams will participate in the project. The Mass. Maritime Academy students will be the project engineers. Students from the Upper Cape Cod Regional Technical School will attend each lab at MMA and will play the role of technicians, working under the guidance of Dr. Sichel and the MMA students. Students at Bristol Community College (BCC) enrolled in a course on strength of materials will play the role of a testing laboratory. They will test the adhesives prepared by the MMA students.

The lab portion of the course involves preparing and life-testing the adhesives. The samples will be deployed off the MMA dock, and observed weekly for life-testing. A paint/adhesive applicator will be designed and built. Students will attend tutorials on searching the patent literature, use of Excel spreadsheets and software for data analysis, and polymer science relevant to the adhesives used in the project. There will be several outside speakers, including an ALVIN pilot, a WHOI geophysicist, and an expert on epoxies.

This project is supported in part by the National Science Foundation. Follow this link to see the grant abstract.

In lieu of a final exam, a final report will be prepared by the class, with the tasks divided among the students participating, including the lab reports from BCC. Copies of the final report will be delivered to the National Science Foundation, which provides funding, to the Office of Naval Research, which has an interest in the technology, and to the manufacturers of the epoxies and adhesives used in the project. The students will make an oral report as a team, with all participants present. Parts of the final report as well as information about the course will be published on the web at a site linked to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s website, www.whoi.edu.