Hello Illinois CEE grad students – I want to call your attention to a national civil engineering student event that we are hosting right here in the department later on this week.

On Friday & Saturday (May 25th & 26th) we will be hosting the annual AISC / ASCE National Student Steel Bridge Competition (https://www.aisc.org/education/university-programs/student-steel-bridge-...). That’s FRIDAY, FRIDAY, FRIDAY and SATURDAY, SATURDAY, SATURDAY!!! The competition will welcome 43 undergraduate student teams from all across the country, with more than 550 attendees in total, and so it is a fairly big deal for us to be able to host this event.

Preparing to host the NSSBC has primarily been a student-run undertaking, under the capable leadership of our two Illinois CEE undergraduate student co-directors, Jacob Cross & Barkin Kurumoglu, also assisted by Nicholas Wipperfurth and a handful of Structures grad students who have recently stepped up to help out down the stretch. They have received excellent Illinois CEE staff support from Megan Everette, Catherine Somers & Tim Prunkard. As faculty advisor to our hosting team, I’m trying to help them out a bit in order to make sure and spread the word about the event. All the main competition activities are free and open to the public, as summarized here below.

On Friday (5/25) afternoon, all of the participating teams will be setting up their bridges & related materials for display out on the Bardeen Quad – however, no actual superconductivity will be involved. The teams will have from roughly 11a until 2:30p to arrive, register, and get set up, and then from 3p-5p is the so-called Display Judging portion of the competition, which is a great opportunity to get to see all the different bridges assembled at one time in one place! Each 18 ft long bridge represents roughly a 1/10th-scale version of an actual 180 ft bridge.

Then on Saturday (5/26) over at the Armory will be the main competition, where each team gets to build their bridge under timed construction, weigh it, and load-test it both laterally and then also vertically (subjected to 2500 lbs). They are judged in categories related to construction speed, bridge lightness, and bridge stiffness, as well as overall construction economy & structural efficiency. The action is fast & furious and gets started right at 8a on Saturday, running until at least mid-afternoon or so by the time all 43 bridges have had the chance to compete.

So, if you like the county fair and/or the rodeo, only without all those pesky animals, then this could be the event for you! We hope to see some of you in attendance. Thanks for your consideration – take care, and have a great Memorial Day weekend.

Prof. LaFave