EAST LANSING, Mich. - Six Michigan State University civil engineering students may not be building bridges over troubled waters, but they will be building bridges that will test their fortitude at a national competition this weekend.
They will join students from 39 colleges and universities at the Year 2000 National American Institute of Steel Construction/American Society of Civil Engineers Student Steel Bridge Competition at Texas A & M, College Station, Texas. The inter-collegiate competition challenges civil engineering students to design, fabricate and construct a steel bridge.
To qualify for national competition, a team must finish first or second in regional competition. MSU finished second in the North Central Regional Student Steel Bridge Contest held at Ann Arbor in April. There are 20 regions in the United States.
Students who will construct the bridge at the national event are Damon Dalby of Grosse Pointe; Peter Walker of Kalamazoo; Mike Szumigala of La Salle; Rebecca Cline and Greg Keenan, both of Portage; and Matt Dean of Traverse City.
Frank Hatfield, professor of civil engineering, is the adviser for the MSU team and will accompany the students to the competition.
Team members who helped design and fabricate, and who also competed in the regional contest, are Matt Block of Beulah; Christopher Evans of Portage; Brian Turczynski of Troy; and Michele Wierzba of Okemos.
"We've been working on this project since last year. We took a couple of months to design the bridge using a computer model, then fabricated and cut all the metal and did our own welding and construction," said Keenan. "We designed one we could build quickly in about three minutes."
The overall performance rating of a bridge is determined by adding the ranks of the bridges in the construction speed, stiffness, efficiency and economy categories. As with a full-scale construction project, safety is the primary concern.
For more information about the MSU team contact Hatfield in the College of Engineering at (517) 355-5167 or Keenan at 351-1398.