Students:
- Aaron Chan (Team Leader),
- Alyssa Hartigan,
- Stephanie Rindosh,
- Maxim Schisler,
- Michael Soriano
Advisor: N. Al-Omaishi
The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) sponsor the National Student Steel Bridge Competition (NSSBC) annually. The competition requires students to design, fabricate, and construct a scaled steel bridge to meet certain specifications. The AISC competition rules for the 2014 competition state that the maximum span of the bridge is 19 feet, the maximum height of the bridge is 5 feet from the surface of the ground, and the bridge must sustain a vertical load of 2400 pounds and a lateral load of 75 pounds. Each bridge is scored according to display, construction speed, lightness, stiffness, construction economy and structural efficiency. The goal is to design and construct the most efficient and economical bridge.
After several preliminary design considerations, the final design selected is an open web joist decking support reinforced by a superstructure truss design. It will span 18’-8” and will utilize Grade 4130 steel hollow tubes and piping. Visual Analysis V8i predicts the weight of the bridge to be 265 pounds while meeting all necessary criteria.
The bridge was fabricated using The College of New Jersey Machine Shop. Team members collectively worked on separate portions of the bridge to complete the machining process. Construction assembly was practiced and the competition took place on April 25th-26th, 2014 at the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, New Jersey.