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This year, Lafayette’s steel bridge team will try to top previous performances in the upcoming regional and national competitions.
The four-person design team for the College is made up of civil and environmental engineering majors James Horting ’08 (Elizabethtown, Pa.), Jared Kozemko ’08 (Wilkes-Barre, Pa.), Aaron Buchman ’08 (Williamsport, Md.), and John Mitchell ’08 (River Vale, N.J.). These students are working on an independent study this semester with Stephen Kurtz, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering.
In the spring semester, all members of Lafayette’s team will contribute to fabricating the bridge for the national competition. This typically involves about 20 additional students.
The National Student Steel Bridge Competition, which is sponsored by the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) and American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), attracts over 200 engineering schools nationally to regional competitions. From these regional competitions, approximately 40 teams qualify for the national competition, an invitation-only event, held each May.
Lafayette took fifth place in last year’s 16th annual national competition held at California State University-Northridge. This was the best national finish ever by Lafayette, which has won its regional competition for two consecutive years and qualified for nationals for three consecutive years.
In August, Lafayette’s team took part in an all-day design retreat to go over the specific rule changes and to establish a strategy based on the latest rules.
Kurtz also meets with the design team formally each week to discuss how to approach these challenges.
“The five of us are equals,” says Kurtz. “We all have criticisms and comments on the previous week’s accomplishments. These criticisms generate new ideas and new scientific studies that must be performed, re-starting the creative process for the next week.”
The object of the competition is to produce a bridge made of structural steel that is efficient and easy to construct. In typical years, winning bridges are constructed in about three minutes, weigh approximately 125 pounds, and deflect less than half an inch at mid-span.
Lafayette will be hosting the regional competition this year in April 2008. Johns Hopkins University, Lehigh University, Drexel University, University of Delaware, Penn State University, and Swarthmore College, along with other schools, are expected to be in attendance.
The 2008 National Student Steel Bridge Competition will be held on May 23-24 at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Fla.
The steel bridge competitions are an integrated part of the civil engineering curriculum at Lafayette. All civil engineering juniors compete in an in-class contest as a part of the Structural Analysis and Steel Design course.