July 17, 2024
The University of Missouri Steel Bridge Team recently placed third overall and won four awards at the American Society of Civil Engineers Mid-America Student Symposium. The results qualified the team for the National Student Steel Bridge Competition at Louisiana Tech University, where they placed 15th for aesthetics.
“It was cool to hear Mizzou called for third place overall, as all of our hard work had paid off,” said Blake Murr, Steel Bridge Team president. “It was also rewarding to see how well our bridge performed in the Stiffness category.”
At competition, the bridges are first judged for aesthetics. Then, teams disassemble their bridges and take turns building them as fast as possible without penalties, which can include dropping bolts on the floor or stepping into a metaphorical “river” on the floor in the middle of where the bridge crosses. If judges consider the bridge safe to load, teams are then evaluated on their bridge’s strength in vertical and lateral load testing.
The team also took a risk this year designing an inverted truss bridge for competition. This design meant that instead of having the supports above the bridge’s surface, the supports were underneath, similar to the Grand Glaize Bridge in Osage Beach, Missouri.
“Mizzou hadn’t built an under-truss in several years and we decided to take on the challenge,” Murr said. “There were several times during design and fabrication when we weren’t sure if the under-truss was going to work, but it was a lot of fun to ultimately build one of the best bridges in the Regional Competition.”
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