Liberty’s Steel Bridge team places second to earn nationals spot, more engineering teams gear up for contests

Civil engineering students from the Liberty University School of Engineering’s Steel Bridge competition team repeated their second-place finish at the March 28-31 American Society of Civil Engineers’ (ASCE) Virginias Student Symposium hosted by the West Virginia University of Technology in Beckley, W.Va.

Extending their classroom knowledge by working through the engineering design process to conceptualize, design, validate, fabricate, and test a 20-foot-long steel bridge with four offset footers capable of supporting a 2,500-pound load with minimal deflection, the team placed second overall to defending champion Virginia Tech in five of the seven competition categories that included aesthetics, construction economy, construction speed, cost estimation, lightness, stiffness, and structural efficiency.

Led by senior Joel Harkness, the team relied on four builders — sophomore Logan Grasser and juniors Chad Parker, Trenton Langin, and Collin Partington — to construct the bridge in 15 minutes, 32 seconds (the video below shows a timelapse from the final round of competition). Other teams competing were from Fairmont State University, James Madison University, Old Dominion University, the University of Virginia, Virginia Military Institute, West Virginia University, and the host WVU Institute of Technology.

The team advances to the May 30-31 Student Steel Bridge Competition National Finals at Iowa State University.

“They will be taking the same bridge to nationals with some improvements, aesthetically and maybe even functionally, to lighten it and beautify it,” said Professor Bryon Ringley, faculty advisor. “Basically, they will be tweaking and trying to lighten up and do all they can to improve the bridge between regionals and the national finals.”

Last year, as one of only two first-year qualifying teams at the national competition, Liberty placed 26th out of 49 teams.

A total of 21 members of Liberty’s ASCE chapter traveled to the event at WVU Tech, competing in six events: the Concrete Canoe regional competition, the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) Student Steel Bridge regional competition, SteelCrete Croquet and Mini Golf competitions, the Hardy Cross oratory competition, and the Marr Technical Paper competition.

Liberty won the SteelCrete croquet competition, with freshman Olivia Schlegel playing a full game using a prefabricated concrete ball and steel mallet. Liberty finished ahead of Fairmont State and VMI in both the design of the mallet and ball and Schlegel defeated individual players in the actual game to claim the first-place title.

In Mini Golf, senior Emma Detwiler and junior Lydia Parker designed, built, and landscaped a miniature golf hole using concrete and other materials. The hole was set up at the competition, judged on aesthetics, and then played on as part of a course layout with all of the other submitted holes. Liberty’s entry and players placed second overall in the competition that included geotechnical features and was judged on constructability and sustainability, among other categories.

The Concrete Canoe team, led by junior Cameron Hendrick and competing with a 400-pound canoe named Lumen, finished fourth out of nine entries in the races and fourth overall. That was its highest finish in three years of competition, but it did not qualify for nationals.

More teams from the School of Engineering are preparing for competitions this semester.

This weekend, Liberty’s Theme Park Engineering competition team, which Ringley also advises, will enter the national Ride Engineering Competition hosted by Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. Team members test their technical knowledge and creativity as they are tasked with designing, planning, and manufacturing a scale-model theme park attraction using force analyses, geometric coaster design, and project management skills while abiding by ASTM international safety standards.

Two vehicle teams are gearing up for national competitions in the next two months: the Formula SAE team will compete May 14-17 at Michigan International Speedway before the Baja vehicle team travels to Mechanicsville, Md., for the SAE Baja National event from June 12-15.

In the fall, the Baja team sent two vehicles to the Oct. 5 Butler Bash in Butler, Pa., where they placed fifth out of 16 entries.

Meanwhile, the Vanguard competition team, a multidiscipline group made up of mechanical, electrical, computer, and industrial & systems engineering students, is working on an autonomous lunar exploratory robotic vehicle designed to collect samples from the surface of the moon to send to the May 15-22 Lunabotics Competition in Orlando, Fla., a NASA-sponsored event.

From June 9-14, Liberty’s Rocketry competition team will prepare for launch at Spaceport Midland, hosted by the Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC) in Midland, Texas. The team placed ninth out of 122 entries at last year’s competition held in Las Cruces, N.M. The event is sponsored by the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association (ESRA).