Hydro-Haven

Hello, I’m Samarth Korada, a rising junior at Poolesville High School in Poolesville, Maryland. I have a strong passion for mechanical engineering & architecture, and I’m currently the captain and Design and mechanical lead of my FTC robotics team, 47 Beavers 13100. I enjoy competing in CADathons because they offer a chance to challenge myself and improve my skills beyond engineering design. After hearing about this competition from family and friends, I was inspired to participate and showcase my talents and create something that could have a real impact. My inspiration for this project came from flash floods, where I saw how it has a devastating effect on infrastructure, leaving people stranded after losing their homes. This motivated me to design a solution that could provide a haven to heal for those in need after losing their homes. Thank you for taking the time to read through my project.

Tools:

-Pencil

-Inch tape/ruler

-Ruler

-Eraser

-paper

Software:

-Fusion

-Bambu studio

-PyCharm

Hardware:

-laptop

-3D printer

It was July 4th, and my family had gone on vacation to Ocean City in Maryland, enjoying the summer beach. At the hotel, we turned on the news and, surprisingly, saw a crazy flash flood occurring in Texas. What was meant to be a day of community celebration and independence quickly turned into a tragedy as the fast-moving waters claimed the lives of more than 135 people across a region dotted with small towns and summer camps roughly 70 miles northwest of San Antonio. The unique geography of the Hill Country, with shallow rivers and rugged valleys are the ideal condition to make the deadliest places in the United States for flash flooding. When heavy rains hit these steep hills, the water channels into narrow valleys with terrifying speed, leaving residents and visitors with almost no time to escape. Seeing this disaster made me realize the horrifying effects of a flash flood. Even in today’s age, with advanced infrastructure, flooding still destroys communities and takes lives.

This tragedy highlights a global crisis. Seasonal flooding shatters communities, destroys infrastructure, and can start waterborne disease outbreaks. The economic toll is also staggering: since 1980, the United States alone has sustained 265 weather and climate disasters where overall damages reached or exceeded $1 billion per event. Beyond the billions of dollars in structural destruction, flooding poses an immediate threat to human life through drowning and severe physical and emotional trauma.

Disasters like those in Texas Hill Country’s flash floods are caused by a fundamental flaw in modern engineering: we design static, immovable buildings for a dynamic, shifting planet

1. Immediate Structural Failure:

Traditional buildings are anchored permanently to the ground. When flash floods channel huge volumes of water into a valley, these walls end up acting as dams. The water exerts immense hydrostatic pressure against the structures, leading to structural failures. Submerged electrical systems create immediate fire and electrocution hazards, while doors and windows become pinned shut by water pressure, isolating people inside.

2. Contamination & Disease:

Even after the rain the threat continues. As floodwaters sweep through towns, they submerge traditional sewage systems, chemical storage, and agricultural runoff. Standing water quickly becomes a toxic stew of industrial chemicals and biological pathogens. This leads to immediate outbreaks of waterborne illnesses and creates breeding grounds for vector-borne diseases. Because water treatment plants are usually built on fixed, low-lying ground, they are knocked offline precisely when clean drinking water is needed most.

3. Chronic Trauma and Displaced Healing:

When a local school, library, or community center is flooded, it is typically condemned or takes years to rebuild. This creates a "disruptive void." Children lose their safe learning spaces, neighbors lose their gathering spots, and emergency organizers lose their base of operations.

For survivors, especially children, returning to a neighborhood where the buildings look exactly the same creates a state of chronic anxiety. Every time it rains, the fear of the water rising again triggers deep psychological trauma because their environment offers no visual or physical promise of safety.

When a community-changing disaster like this strikes, traditional fixed infrastructure fails, leaving survivors traumatized and displaced. Rebuilding cannot just be replacing what was lost with the same vulnerable designs for houses and buildings.

I was inspired to create a design to fight against natural disasters, which led to the idea of the Hydro-Haven.

This is an amphibious, modular public pavilion designed to rise with the water rather than fight it. It adapts to the environment by floating up as water floods the city. It ensures that even in the midst of a historic flash flood, a community retains a safe, dry anchor for physical protection, medical aid, and emotional healing.

This haven is designed to meet three critical needs that traditional community centers often cannot address during extreme flooding:

1. Emergency Escape During Flash Floods:

Hydro-Haven rises with the water instead of resisting it. As floods surge through the area, the amphibious foundation allows the structure to float safely above rising levels, giving residents a reliable place to evacuate to when nearby buildings are compromised or submerged.

2. Short-Term Recovery and Rapid Access for Aid:

The pavilion is engineered as a centralized hub for first responders, medical teams, and relief organizations. Its modular layout and elevated, flood-resilient design make it easy for boats, amphibious vehicles, and drones to reach, turning Hydro-Haven into a staging area for distributing supplies, providing medical care, and coordinating rescue operations in the crucial hours and days after a disaster.

3. Emotional Resilience and Community Healing:

Beyond physical safety, Hydro-Haven functions as a memory-safe haven. Its calming, light-filled spaces, rotating geodesic dome, and intentional use of Vastu and Feng Shui principles create an environment that supports psychological recovery. It becomes a place where survivors can gather, share stories, rebuild routines, and slowly transform the trauma of the flood into a collective memory of resilience.

Constraint 1: Archimedes' principle:

Archimedes' principle states that the upward buoyant force exerted on an object immersed in a fluid (whether fully or partially) is exactly equal to the weight of the fluid the object displaces

This means that for this structure to be a safe haven rather than a sinking structure the maximum volume of our concrete pontoons must displace a mass of water greater than the total structural dead weight and payload combined. This severely limits the area of the building base and creates a requirement to displace a certain volume of water.

Constraint 2: Material Sustainability & Weight Optimization:

The materials must be lightweight and affordable for this design to stay afloat. These materials have to be ecological and sustainably sourced. It also has to be highly weather-resistant against flash floods and structurally optimized for minimal dead weight to maintain our Factor of Safety.

Constraint 3: Energy Access:

:Hundreds of people will be staying in this center, which will make the electricity demand very high. And it’s not determined how long it will take for help to arrive after the flood. Residents will need power for lighting, charging devices, communication, heating or cooling systems, medical equipment, and other daily necessities. Providing enough reliable energy for a large number of people before recovery can become a major challenge for the Hydro Haven.

Solution to Constraint 1: Archimedes' principle:

The Footprint Area per Tile (A): Using a circumscribed hexagon formula with a 2 radius 4m flat-to-flat width

The Footprint of the Full Platform: Multiplying by our 21 interlocking tiles gives a total area of:

The Physical Limit (Maximum Buoyant Lift):

Compliance with a 2x Factor of Safety: Operating at a strict 2x Factor of Safety, our safe operational displacement limit is capped at 163,645. The combined model weight then has to be carefully engineered to stay well below this threshold to satisfy the physical constraint. This would then leave a stable, floating platform that keeps the clinical spaces and shelter completely safe above rising floodwaters.

Solution to Constraint 2: Material Sustainability & Weight Optimization

Weight of the People: 200 people * 80kg for each person = 1600 kg

Materials:

1. Pontoon Walls: UHPC (Ultra-High Performance Concrete)

Hexagon area: 3sqrt3a^2/2

4m hexagon - 3.6mm hexagon = wall area 7.89893

7.89893 * 1.5 height = 11.848395 volume of walls m^3

11.848395 m^3 * 2400 kg/m^3 = 28,436.148 kg for walls

2. Makerspace: CLT, Mass Timber - Feng Shui (Growth and Vitality)

Instead of steel framing, the two-story Makerspace Wing utilizes Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT). CLT offers an exceptional strength-to-weight ratio, carrying heavy structural loads while being roughly 80% lighter than standard concrete framing. This significantly reduces the downward force acting on our concrete pontoons.

3. Foundation Deck: Recycled HDPE & Bamboo Composites

The main walking deck uses an engineered composite of Recycled HDPE and bamboo fibers. Bamboo represents the "Wood" element in Feng Shui (vitality and growth), while the HDPE plastic provides absolute waterproofing. This prevents the deck from absorbing water weight during a flood, keeping our platform's mass perfectly constant.

4m hexagon area: 41.57

41.57 * 0.1m height = 4.157m^3

4.157m^3 * 930 kg/m^3 HDPE density = 3866.01kg

4. The Centerpiece Roof (ETFE Film Matrix):

To enclose the central spinning dome without the crushing weight and fragility of architectural glass, the dome is paneled with ETFE (Ethylene Tetrafluoroethylene) film. ETFE is 1% the weight of glass, highly elastic, transmits more natural therapeutic sunlight for the interior greenhouse, and won't shatter during high-wind storm events.

All of these materials are now strong enough not to shatter in flash flood weather conditions.

Solution to Constraint 3: Energy Access

During extreme flash flood events, regional power grids are highly vulnerable and routinely fail due to submerged substations and downed utility poles. Because Hydro-Haven is an emergency medical triage and community hub, it must adhere to a strict constraint of 100% decentralized energy autonomy. The platform cannot rely on shore-based electrical infrastructure and must generate, store, and manage its own power continuously to run life-saving medical equipment, ventilation, water purification systems, and the low-friction magnetic levitation track.

The Generation Matrix (Photovoltaic Deck Shingles):

To generate power without adding heavy wind turbines or polluting diesel generators, the roof of the two-story Mass Timber Makerspace Wing is clad in high-efficiency monocrystalline solar shingles. This utilizes existing architectural surface area to generate clean electricity without taking up valuable deck space.

The Storage Subsystem (Saltwater Energy Storage):

Traditional lithium-ion batteries pose massive fire risks and are highly toxic if compromised by water. To store solar energy safely on a floating platform, Hydro-Haven utilizes non-flammable, non-toxic Saltwater Batteries (Sodium-ion). These batteries store daytime solar energy to keep the clinic running through the night, and their weight is strategically factored into the lower hull compartments to act as low-center-of-gravity ballast, increasing the platform's stability.

The Mechanical Conservation (Low-Friction MagLev):

Power generation is highly limited during stormy, overcast flood conditions. To ensure the central Brahmasthan dome can still rotate dynamically and align with the earth's magnetic fields without draining the entire battery bank, its base is constrained to a zero-contact, permanent-magnet levitation track. By eliminating mechanical friction, the energy required to rotate the dome is reduced by over 90%, allowing it to spin smoothly using minimal electrical power.

Now that I have determined all the characteristics of this Hydro Haven, I need to find a location for it. Some factors I need to ensure the site meets are that it’s in a flash flood area, and it’s in a central location for people to easily come to it. In addition, the location should support long-term recovery and contain existing infrastructure and community resources.

Based on historical disaster data and geographical vulnerability, I have selected the municipality of Fredericksburg, Texas, located in Gillespie County roughly 70 miles northwest of San Antonio, as the ideal deployment zone for this resilient structure.

Fredericksburg sits directly within the infamous "Flash Flood Alley" of the United States, a region characterized by steep, rugged hills and narrow valleys. This unique topography means that sudden storm fronts channel torrential rainfall into shallow, winding waterways like Barons Creek with terrifying speed, as seen during devastating local flood events. Because Fredericksburg functions as the major economic, cultural, and transport anchor for a vast network of rural summer camps, agricultural operations, and small surrounding towns, it acts as a perfect centralized beacon. In the immediate aftermath of a flash flood, rescue teams can efficiently transport displaced families from all directions directly to the pavilion's accessible ramps.

Finalized Makerspace Wing:

In the final design layout, the Makerspace Wing evolved into a highly integrated, two-story resilient framework. By locking its geometric footprint into the northeast quadrant of the active Fusion 360 timeline, we finalized its material composition as 100% Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT), capitalizing on its exceptional strength-to-weight ratio to keep the structure 80% lighter than standard concrete framing. Architecturally, we finalized the inclusion of vertical living green walls hosting over ten biophilic planters to actively filter indoor air and lower occupant cortisol levels. Furthermore, the roof structure was optimized with high-efficiency monocrystalline solar shingles, transforming the makerspace into the primary power generation hub for our decentralized energy microgrid.

Finalized Central Rotating Dome:

The centerpiece of the finalized Hydro-Haven design is the completed Brahmasthan MagLev Dome. Moving past the initial structural sketches, the dome’s geometric network was locked as a strict geodesic sphere paneled in an advanced ETFE film matrix. Because ETFE is only 1% the weight of traditional glass, we drastically reduced the downward gravitational force acting on the center of the platform. The most significant engineering finalization was configuring the zero-friction magnetic levitation track at its base. By substituting traditional mechanical rollers with permanent-magnet levitation, we reduced the mechanical friction by 90%, proving that the dome can rotate smoothly and align with the earth's natural geomagnetic fields while pulling minimal electrical power from our sodium-ion battery banks.

Finalized Medical Clinic:

The finalized Emergency Medical Clinic stands as a masterclass in therapeutic architecture, perfectly isolated from the surrounding platform traffic to preserve a quiet healing environment. The structure's unique 60 trapezoid footprint was completed with a custom seamless cream brick texture map, scaled meticulously to a 1:1000 macro-scale to reflect up to 80% of incoming solar heat radiation. This material choice keeps the clinic naturally cool, lowering the building's air conditioning load. The finalized model features a private cantilevered balcony extending over the open water and integrated acoustic insulation. To ensure international compliance and immediate visibility, we rejected the generic red cross symbol and instead finalized a custom 3D-extruded blue Star of Life emblem centered above the primary entranceway, immediately identifying the wing as a safe, legal emergency shelter.

In TinkerCAD, I first designed the pontoon. The first image shows a single hexagon without the top layer, showing how it's hollow. The 2nd image is one row of the pontoon. And the 3rd image is the final pontoon size of 5 x 4, staggering of the individual modular hexagons into a clean honeycomb shape to maximize area

I added the 4 orange pillars, which the Hydro-Haven would rise on when flooding occurs. Here I've kept the makerspace on the top-right, matching the floor pattern for aesthetics and to maximize interior area. The medical clinic is the trapezoid on the left. Finally, the Brahmasthan

Now that all the ideas are put on the paper, we can start bringing the designs to life using the power of CAD. For this project, the software we will use will be Fusion 360, it’s a software created by Autodesk. Fusion is known for its extremely smooth CADing experience and its user-friendly interface.

Learning Fusion 360 wasn’t too complicated, especially because I already used tinker cad and experienced in onshape. Autodesk also offers a web page with a downloadable desk mat which lists all the Fusion 360 keyboard shortcuts. This resource was especially helpful as I was getting familiar with all the shortcuts.

Autodesk desk mat:

Source:https://damassets.autodesk.net/content/dam/autodesk/images/autodesk-fusion-shorcuts-deskmat-1.png?_gl=1*1jt90jp*_gcl_aw*R0NMLjE3NTAxOTgyNTIuQ2p3S0NBandwTVRDQmhBLUVpd0FfLU1zbVJpWVA0Vzl1bW1vLVFMUkprd3pEa0FvODhWd21vVkllVG5zU1d1c0xrcmk3OUk5T1NQTm14b0N6cHdRQXZEX0J3RQ..*_gcl_au*MTQ4MjU0MjIyMy4xNzQ5OTAyNTk1*FPAU*MTY0MDg3NDk3Mi4xNzQ5OTAyNTk1*_ga*OTg1NjEzMjUzLjE3NDk5MDI1OTQ.*_ga_NZSJ72N6RX*czE3NTAzOTQwNjMkbzE0JGcxJHQxNzUwMzk0MTM2JGo1OCRsMCRoMA..

Designing the pontoon on fusion was relatively the same as in TinkerCad but it was much smoother due to Fusion's rectangular pattern feature in sketch.

While deisgning the Makerspace in fusion reduced it's size to only 3 hexagons but it has 2 stories. To conserve energy during the daytime I added skylights for natural lighting. It also has a large open 2nd floor with greenery addressing a biophillic design.

I originally wanted to make geodesic dome with the dome being split into triangular glass pieces for a more a realistic view. But due to rendering issues it appears as just a regular dome. This transparent dome rotates based off the wind direction and magnetic spin of the earth following Vaastu.

The medical clinic is constructed with light colored bricks to ensure a strong and stable design as well reflecting light to prevent excess heat absorbtion. Solar panels are added on the roof to make this a sustainable design. Instead of a red cross there is a blue Star of Life emblem centered above the primary entranceway, immediately identifying the wing as a safe, legal emergency shelter.

Lastly I combined all the buildings onto the pontoon foundation and organized it. I also added curved pathways as part of Feng Shui to connect each location on the Hydro-Haven. I added the 4 strong foundation pillars which the haven is connected through via chains to anchor it in place as it rises from floodwater. Finally I added the water for a better visual representation.

Using Autodesk Fusion's rendering capability, I was able to get a realistic image with the correct lighting and coloring for the specific materials. This shows the full product of the Hydro-Haven.