CSU, Chico News

California State University, Chico’s civil engineering students captured an intercollegiate design competition for the third time in the last four years.

Chico defeated CSU, Sacramento, the University of the Pacific and UC, Davis at the Structural Engineers Association of Central California (SEAOCC) structural design contest.

The contest was held in three phases, with the final presentation stage and prizes awarded on November 9 at the annual SEAOCC student night in Sacramento.

For the contest, engineering students must design and construct a structure according to specific dimensional and material limitations. The structure should be easy to assemble, have a high strength-weight ratio and a predictable failure mode.

The Chico team of four civil engineering students built a 12-foot by 4-foot by 5-inch custom truss, called an “underslung” truss in the building industry. The truss was built from the three materials allowed — steel, aluminum, and wood — and was designed to fail by the tearing of a steel gusset plate at a connecting bolt.

This kind of failure is the most undesirable in an actual bridge or building because it is sudden and there is little reserve strength. Its consistency, however, made it easy to identify by the judges.

The competition was divided into three stages: a design phase, a timed assembly phase and a presentation phase. The design phase required the teams to submit a design report that included substantiating engineering calculations, the same type of calculations performed for a real structure in order to evaluate its strength.

The second stage, held a week after the first at UC, Davis, included a timed assembly period. Chico’s complex structure took about 2 1/2 minutes to assemble — one of the slower times for the Chico team. The complexity paid off in the accuracy of predictions.

Of the four teams, Chico’s was the only one to predict both the magnitude of the failure load and the type of failure. Chico’s structure missed the predicted load by only nine pounds, with a predicted load of 3,409 pounds and an actual failure load of 3,418 pounds. This is one of the most accurate predictions made at this competition.

On November 9, team members Josh Wallace, Jason Zwinggi, Jared Holliday and Brian Stephenson gave a presentation on all stages of the competition. They were awarded $400 along with first place overall.

Engineering

Along with their successes in other competitions, the civil engineering students have out-performed some of the best universities in the nation. Such competitions are not only demonstrations of the quality of the civil engineering department at CSU, Chico, they are valuable tests of student preparation for eventual careers as engineers.

The faculty adviser for the CSU, Chico team is Dr. Russell Mills. Shop technicians Jim Luallen and Mike Renwick assisted in fabrication of the structure.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 17th, 1999 at 10:42 am and is filed under 1999 Fall.