NU Students Win ASCE NE Bridge Competition
Students steel themselves for finals after regional bridge contest win
BUILDING A BRIDGE. Joseph Ellis, Bryan Lavigne and Matt Kelly assemble the project. Courtesy Photo
It’s not just about neat blueprints. The annual Steel Bridge Competition, in fact, requires that students not only design a bridge to exacting specifications, but also raise money for materials, fabricate parts, deliver the pieces in a prescribed fashion, build a bridge under time pressure and on budget, and then pile weights on it to test its deflection.
The quintessentially experiential focus of the competition apparently plays to Northeastern’s strengths. A team from the university’s American Society of Civil Engineering chapter took first place in the New England regional competition last week, and now head to the nationals in Florida to strut, as it were, their stuff. They topped 10 other teams, including one from MIT, winning their second regional championship and fourth trip to the U.S. finals since 2000.
The key to victory: “It’s really light, it’s really strong, and they put it together really fast,” said associate professor Robert Tillman, co-adviser — with professor Tom Sheahan — of the student group.
Students start working on the project every fall, not as part of a class but as an extracurricular activity. “They get a set of rules, the design problem for that year,” said Tillman. “All the schools get the same set at the same time. They have to build about a one-tenth-scale model bridge, and they get design criteria: how long, how wide, what span and large are the pieces that you can use to put it together.”
By January, students have a design ready and “they start constructing, welding, taking it apart, ripping it up, constructing again … and when it’s all done, we put a ‘build team’ together — the team that’s actually going to the competition.”
That team practices all the skills that volunteer judges — both academics and working engineers — will look for: delivering the bridge under a set of prescribed working conditions and racing the clock to put it up.
“We built ours in under 10 minutes — about where every (team) was,” Tillman said. “But we’re doing it with five (students) and they’re all doing it with six — we make out better on the economy of building.”
When the bridge is constructed, judges look at its design and aesthetics, and then test how well it bears a load — with not just the weight, but its distribution, predetermined.
“We had a really strong bridge,” he said. “We knew that going in.” Others weren’t so fortunate: “three failed outright.”
What most capitivates the students every year, Tillman said, is not merely the chance for glory, but the opportunity to watch the other teams.
“Everybody got the same set of rules and everybody got the same design requirements,” he said. “But when you get there and all these bridges look different, you realize this is what engineering’s all about.”
The student will now test their mettle against about 45 schools in the Gainesville competition over Memorial Day weekend; their latest challenge is raising money to pay for the trip, Tillman said.