The Spartan Spanners finished 12th in the national championship of the Student Steel Bridge Competition.
The Michigan State University College of Engineering team was among 47 teams from the United States and Canada that qualified for the national competition at the University of Missouri in Kansas City.
The Spartan Spanners finished first in the North Central Region at the University of Toledo on April 10 to advance to the national competition. It is the third year in a row MSU has won the region, which includes nine universities from Michigan and Northern Ohio.
MSU team adviser Frank Hatfield said the national contest is the culmination of a highly competitive regional competition that included 224 universities competing in 18 regions.
“Most teams were from the United States, but there were some from China, Canada and Mexico,” Hatfield said. “This year’s MSU Steel Bridge Team was a truly great team in many ways.”
The Spartan Spanners spent months designing, cutting, drilling and welding their project to produce a steel bridge that weighs only 136 pounds.
This year’s national champions were from the University of Florida in Gainesville, followed by California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, and École de Technologie Supérieure in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
The Student Steel Bridge Competition is an international competition that challenges civil engineering students to design, fabricate and erect a 20-foot long steel bridge to support 2,500 pounds.