A University of Colorado at Boulder conference April 3 and April 4 will feature contests for civil engineering students from the Rocky Mountain region who have designed and built concrete canoes and small steel bridges.
As many as 200 undergraduates and teams of faculty advisers from 14 universities in the region are expected to attend the two-day event, said Stein Sture, chair of ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä-BoulderÂ’s civil, architectural and environmental engineering department. The Rocky Mountain Regional Conference of the American Society of Civil Engineers Student Chapter has been held annually since 1954.
The event also will feature a Mystery Design Contest in the College of Engineering and Applied ScienceÂ’s new Integrated Teaching and Learning Laboratory, a concrete canoe race at Boulder Reservoir, and the assembly of elaborate 25-foot-long steel bridges designed and built by students. All university teams competing in the events will consist of four students.
The two-person concrete canoes generally weigh between 80 and 160 pounds, about the same as a traditional aluminum canoe, said Sture. The canoe presentations will be held at 9:15 a.m. on April 3 at Fiske Planetarium.
A concrete canoe display will be from 10:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Saturday, April 4, at Boulder Reservoir, followed by canoe races pitting teams from different schools against each other from noon until 5 p.m.
The steel bridge competition will be held from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. in Balch Fieldhouse, he said. The 25-foot-long bridges, which are about two-and-one-half feet wide, were created over the past several months by the student teams and designed to support up to 2,500 pounds. The bridges will be judged on their load-bearing capacity, deflection, aesthetics, weight and ease of assembly.
“This is always an enjoyable event,” said Sture, who noted ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä-Boulder last hosted the conference in 1989. “And it always is a good opportunity to showcase our department, college and campus. We have had students from previous competitions here come back to ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä to attend graduate school.”
The Mystery Design contest will be in the Integrated Teaching and Learning Laboratory at the engineering college from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, April 4. Teams of students will be provided with simple materials like balsa wood, paper, tape, drinking straws and pins, and then assigned to build miniature engineering structures. The mystery designs will be judged on such criteria as load capacity, creativity and functionality, said Sture.
The conference, limited to sophomores, juniors and seniors, also will feature a number of general and technical paper presentations as well as tours of the ITLL facility and the civil engineering labs, Sture said.
Last year, seven ¶¶ÒõÂÃÐÐÉä-Boulder civil engineering students drove to Rapid City, S.D., for the ASCE regional event in a blizzard, but still managed to compete in all of the events, including the outdoor concrete canoe races.