UC Berkeley team wins national steel bridge competition at Clemson University

Published: June 1, 2012

CLEMSON, S.C. — The team from the University of California, Berkeley, was the overall winner of the 2012 National Student Steel Bridge Competition at Clemson University.

The Berkeley team placed first in Construction Speed, first in the Economy of the bridge design, second in Efficiency and third in Lightness.

Other category first-place winners were Michigan Technological University for Lightness and for Efficiency, Milwaukee School of Engineering for Display and the University of Louisiana at Lafayette for Stiffness.

The top 10 overall winners following Berkeley were teams from MIT; Cal Poly; Michigan Tech; the University of Akron; the University of Wisconsin at Madison; the University of California, Davis; SUNY College of Technology at Canton; Clemson University; and the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Click here for the complete results (pdf).

More than 500 students from 47 universities competed May 25 and 26 at Clemson University. (Event photo gallery).

The teams are from schools around the U.S., Canada, Mexico and China. Their bridges had to be strong enough to hold 2,500 pounds, span an imaginary river and be designed to minimize the amount of steel and construction time.

Teams were scored based on how long it took to assemble their bridges multiplied by the number of team members building them, how much their bridges weighed to measure how much material they used, how little their bridges deflected when weight was added and if they could hold the 2,500 pounds. Aesthetics also could affect the final scores.

“It’s not just designing a bridge that can hold 2,500 pounds ­— that’s easy,” said Clemson professor Scott Schiff, who worked with a Creative Inquiry team of students majoring in civil engineering or Parks, Recreation Tourism Management to host the competition with the Glenn Department of Civil Engineering. “It’s designing a bridge that’s easy to build, meets all of the design requirements and construction rules and can hold 2,500 pounds.”

The American Institute of Steel Construction was the primary sponsor of the National Student Steel Bridge Competition, with the American Society of Civil Engineers the primary co-sponsor. The event also was supported by other local and industry sponsors.

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