By Alex Gilbert
On April 22nd, the Western New England University Steel Bridge Team scored third place at the 2023 Regional Student Steel Bridge Competition. The civil engineering team’s achievements in aesthetic design, stiffness, and construction time led to their third-place victory. Under the distributed loading weight of 2500 pounds, the bridge only deflected a mere 1.12 inches.
The competition was hosted at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. The entire steel bridge team attended, made up of nine members from the Western New England student chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers.
The competition was long and exhausting, but the team put forth their best effort and had a great experience. After driving to Boston on Friday the night before, the team had to wake up at 5:00 in the morning to make it to the event center. The competition lasted almost the entire day, from 6:00 in the morning until 7:00 at night.
Owen Feindel, a member of the steel bridge team and ASCE, spoke to The Westerner about the competition. Although it was a long day, he said he had a great time at the competition. “It was fantastic to see other engineers and compare our experiences.” There were over ten other teams in attendance that had also constructed their own steel bridges. The design and construction process is lengthy and difficult, but it is nice to share that experience with others. He noted that “it was especially cool to see everyone’s bridges in the same room.”
The 540-pound bridge was constructed on campus, composed of many individually cut and welded steel parts connected together by nuts and bolts. The entire steel bridge team contributed to the design and construction process from start to finish. The bridge was initially designed on a 3D modeling software called SolidWorks, and then the steel parts were fabricated in the University’s machine shop. The club worked very hard, giving up many hours designing the bridge, fabricating the pieces, editing a video of the design process, and practicing the timed construction of the bridge.
The steel bridge project took nearly the entire school year. Feindel explained that “the starting goal was to design the first semester and construct the second semester.” However, the bridge took longer to design and construct than expected. He said that they were “even painting it just the day before the competition.”
The steel bridge team encountered many challenges and difficulties while creating the bridge. The competition required teams to build bridges that met all the constraints given, causing a lot of difficulty in the design process. Feindel explained that the team “occasionally had great ideas that didn’t meet the guidelines and they had to go back to the drawing board.”
Not only was the bridge an academic challenge, but it also was a physical challenge. One of the six builders, Adam Leszczak spoke about his experience. To him, “the most challenging part was the initial practices of building the bridge. It was difficult to optimize the construction process to get the construction time down.” Teams were judged on their construction time, so perfecting the assembly process was extremely important. Every minute and second counted, which meant there was no time for error or miscommunication. The team finished the build in just seconds under the thirty-minute mark, quickly advancing the team to the top scoring ranks.
Leszczak was highly proud of his and the team’s hard work this semester. “The moment when we put the final weight on the bridge and it didn’t break was my favorite moment. It really showed that we did it.”
Western New England University’s Steel Bridge team will travel to the Student Steel Bridge Competition National Finals at the University of California, San Diego, this summer. The competition will last most of the weekend, with the aesthetics judging starting on Friday, June 2nd. The team is very excited about this major opportunity, especially since it is the first time the team has ever qualified for finals. The pieces of the bridge will soon be shipped out to San Diego to prepare for the competition. The entire team will be attending with all nine members and faculty advisor Dr. Moochul Shin.
