CSU, Chico News

California State University, Chico civil engineering students finished in second place at the Mid-Pacific Region Steel Bridge Competition held at the University of Nevada, Reno, April 24. The steel bridge team earned an unprecedented eighth consecutive bid to the national steel bridge competition.

The Colorado School of Mines will be hosting the national competition on the weekend of May 28-30. In 2000, CSU, Chico won the national championship and in 1999 took second place in the nation.

This year’s competition hosted teams primarily from Northern California and Nevada. They included University of Nevada, Reno; UC Berkeley; UC Davis; CSU, Sacramento; San Jose State; San Francisco State; CSU, Fresno; and a special appearance by the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

CSU, Chico’s steel bridge team started the annual process during the fall semester of 2003, when the official rules were sent to more than 200 colleges and universities across the United States, Japan, Canada and Mexico.

Each school that entered the competition had to design and fabricate a scaled-down steel bridge that will span a 26-foot wide fictitious river. At each school’s respective regional competitions, the assembly of the bridges will be timed, and this score, along with the weight and the deflection of the bridge under a 2,500-pound load, will be tabulated.

At the Mid-Pacific Region Conference, Chico’s team assembled their bridge with the fastest time of 4 min. 38 sec. Under the distributed 2,500-lb. load, the 194-lb. bridge deflected only 0.46″. This measurement was only 0.07″ more than UC Davis, who finished first in the overall competition. Chico State and UC Davis will compete against approximately 40 other schools at the national competition in Colorado this May.

Co-team captain Kip King described why he has been on the SBT for the last three years: “This competition puts your civil engineering knowledge to the test. It is one thing to regurgitate information on a test, but another to design, fabricate and compete with the brightest civil engineering minds in the nation.”

The steel bridge was designed by team co-captain Steve Grupico and was assembled during the competition by Kip King, Brett Dolan, Ben Fontana, Keith Mack and L.S. Williams.

The fabrication process of the steel bridge is conducted under the excellent supervision and mentoring of Jim Luallen in Langdon Hall’s technology shop. Additional support for the steel bridge team comes from Professor Joel Arthur and first-year advisor Professor Tonya Emerson.

For additional information, contact Steve Grupico via e-mail at Spgdb73@aol.com or Tonya Emerson at 530-898-5114.

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 5th, 2004 at 8:30 am and is filed under 2004 Spring.