Members of the Carroll College ASCE Student Chapter are busy cutting, welding and fabricating a steel bridge this winter. The bridge will be entered into competition at the 2018 ASCE Pacific Northwest Student Conference at Oregon Institute of Technology (OIT) on April 6.
Carroll will compete against 18 other schools from the Pacific Northwest, British Columbia, and Alaska. The project started in October 2017 with the design of the bridge using a structural software package. With the help of professional mentors from the Montana Department of Transportation, the design was completed in December and construction is well underway. Prior to using welders and shop tools, the students participated in two Shop Safety Days with training on all tools and equipment in the engineering laboratory. In the end, the bridge will be approximately 20 feet long and 3 feet wide.
Students and their bridge will be judged on a poster explaining the design, time to construct the bridge using hand tools, and a load test. The bridge has to fit a tight set of criteria for dimensions and deflection under loading. Six Carroll students will be part of the bridge team and will travel with six other students from Carroll who will compete in other competitions at OIT.