Component Three

Provide a forecast of what the workforce demand would be over a five-year period to produce and market your team�s technical application or process. Include the impact such production would have on the marketplace.

In America, the demand for raw, natural resources is high. Catering to both the U.S. and nations across the globe, we are obligated to deliver these items in a timely fashion and with maximum efficiency. Given these aspects of trade, we are faced with challenges in providing the best possible source of transportation that will not only be beneficial in a monetary sense, but will also have positive environmental impacts. What better candidate than barges?

Fact: "Barges safely and efficiently move fully 15 percent of our nation�s freight for less than 2 percent of the total bill"� and "move more than 800 million tons of cargo each year!"

Barges are a driving force in transit, but usually an unrecognized part of our economy. Ironically, when the average American considers modes of transporting goods, the barge industry is often overlooked. But it is in fact one of the best ways to transport products. For example, one barge can carry 1500 tons of metal that would otherwise require 20 rail cars or 75 semi-trucks.

We have proposed a product that will act as a centerboard for a fleet of barges improving their maneuverability. This improvement with have two important advantages: (1) it will shorten the time needed for empty barges to return for their next cargo-loads, and (2) it will hopefully decrease the incidence of expensive mishaps.

The following chart shows the major markets impacted by the barge industry on the Mississippi River and Illinois Waterway during 2000.

Note that nearly 44% of all river traffic is agricultural. In fact, more than one-third of all grains exported from the U.S. being carried out by barges(1). In addition to their impact on the agricultural market, barges are also responsible for moving 21% of our coal and oil to market. With the help of our product, we hope to stimulate this market by increasing the efficiency of this system minimally by 10%.

In addition to the formidable commercial leverage wielded by the barge industry is the fact that it has many positive environmental impacts:

• The most fuel-efficient transportation available
• Reduced air pollution
• Fewer trucks adding to highway congestion and traffic accidents
• Reduced wear on roads, less noise, and fewer tires for disposal
• Increased access to markets

It is an economic fact that we can save a vast amount of money transporting via barge than any other means. In the coming years, the world population will continue to grow and place ever-increasing demands on our grain exports. The employment of barges is fundamental in our prosperous economy and our competitive force in the global market. In fact, as depicted in the subsequent graphs below, the entire barge industry has grown from moving 667 million tons in 1980 to moving 811 million tons in the year 2000.

The steady increase leads us to believe that within the next five years and anon, the business will only ascend to moving more cargo. In addition, the aid of our apparatus will prove to make a more productive and booming market. These two following diagrams show, in short, the extrapolation of corn and soybeans for the years to come as well as previous ones. This is in concurrence with our predictions.

Fact: "A study by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers notes that traffic on the Upper Mississippi River will steadily increase between the years 2000 and 2050 growing by about 63 percent over those years. The same forecast predicts an average growth rate of 2 percent per year on the Upper Mississippi River during the remainder of the 1990s."

Without the employment of barges many other markets within our economy would be greatly affected. Those would include such industries as oils and petroleum to chemicals and agriculture, to such things as food and dairy products. The year 2002 proved to be quite a sufficient year for the barge industry, moving roughly 789,935,000 short tons of goods.

These graphs dramatically speak for themselves as to the importance of barges. The incorporation of our product will hopefully increase the already high degree of productivity of the barge, towboat, and tugboat industries in American shipping.

Give two examples of undergraduate or graduate degree programs in science or engineering that directly relate to your team's NCT technical application. For each program, be sure to include the following:
   the URL address of the institution,
   the department (for example, chemical engineering, electronic engineering) where the program is offered, and
   a brief description of the program of study.

The United States Naval Academy houses a whole host of maritime courses that are aimed at the engineering aspect of maritime activity. In addition to their core curriculum of: engineering, natural sciences, humanities and social sciences, professional and leadership skills, which is aimed at teaching the skills required to create competent officers for the Marine Corp and the Navy, they offer courses that range from the basics of ship design to advanced material mechanics.

• Principles of Ship Performance and Naval Architecture
• Ship Structures, Hydrostatics and Stability
• Naval Materials Science and Engineering
• Ship Design
• Navigation and Piloting

A major goal of the Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering program is:

You will be an engineer, a naval architect, and an individual who is capable of finding viable economical and technical solutions to a variety of complex and open-ended engineering problems. Such as: How to safely and efficiently move a variety of cargoes across the world�s oceans (cruise liners, tankers, containerships, heavy lift ships, tug-barge units, etc.).

The USNA�s courses would be vital for one interested in the modification, production, or repair of our technology.

The Maine Maritime Academy specializes in educating individuals in the feild of pioloting and maintaining maritime vessels. Their merchant marine acadmey trains persons in two aspects of maritime service, that of pioliting a vessel or servicing and maintaining a vessel. The Maine Maritime acadmey strives to continue to provide the highest quality maritime, engineering, engineering technology, marine science, and logistics education with facilities and laboratories that are at the leading edge of technological innovation. Listed below are courses that one intrested in pioloting a vessel using our device would benefit from taking:

• Marine Engineering Fundamentals
• Intro to Marine Transportation
• Ship Handling
• Seamanship
• Navigation

The Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusettes Institute of Technology offers programs in Ocean Science and Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Ocean Engineering.

• Acoustics and Sensing
• Structural Mechanics
• Sonar, Radar, and Seismic Signal Processing
• Marine Hydrodynamics
• Design and Manufacturing
• System Dynamics and Control
• Hydrodynamics

The above listed courses focus in on the technical sensing component of our device. These background provided in these courses would be vital to operating, future refinements, and troubleshooting our device.

Develop an idea for a new science and/or engineering degree program that might emerge given the advancements in scientific knowledge that the team has identified. Provide a title and 100-word description of this new degree program.

Our graduate program will enable our students to build, refine, repair, and use our product. We would like our students to have a Bachelors degree in Mechanical engineering with a strong background in engineering principles; ship performance, marine navigation and design. As well as taking the following courses students will be required to have six hours of internship.

Year One

1. General Hydromechanics
2. Advanced Circuit Techniques
3. Naval Materials and ScienceEngineering
4. *Organometallic Chemistry
5. Welding and Joining Processes
6. System control interface
7. Hull/Accessory structure design
8. Navigational Sonar

Year Two

1. *Marine hydromechanics
2. Mechanical Properties and Materials
3. Sonar signal processing
4. *Synthetic Polymer Chemistry
5. *Advanced Carbon Properties

*=elective