American Society of Civil Engineers - Student Chapter

WHO WE ARE

The Oregon State University Steel Bridge Team competes in the annual Student Steel Bridge Competition (SSBC). The team is a collaboration between the OSU student chapters of American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) and American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), as well as the welding department at Linn Benton Community College (LBCC). Our team is made up of students representing a diverse range of academic majors and university grade levels. Our team's goal is to provide students with hands-on learning experiences, opportunities to develop professional skills, and a supportive, fun community united by shared passions for engineering and turning the seemingly impossible into reality.

WHAT WE DO

The SSBC requires the team to design and fabricate a 1:10 scale model steel bridge completely from scratch each year. Students work as a team to design a bridge that overcomes the unique challenges presented for each year's competition. Each challenge mimics a real-life engineering challenge that certified engineers must account for. The creation of our bridge is a year-long project that culminates in competing at the Pacific Northwest Student Symposium regional competition.

DESIGN, FABRICATE, AND ASSEMBLE

The design process of our bridge provides students with opportunities to develop professional skills like communication, teamwork, project management, and problem-solving, along with opportunities to develop engineering skills like referencing the AISC Steel Construction Manual, cost estimating, and developing proficiencies in commonly-used engineering softwares (RISA3D, AutoCAD, BlueBeam Revu, and Excel). The fabrication process of our bridge provides students with the opportunity to learn how to weld and construct with steel.

The assembly portion of the competition requires our team to bring the disassembled members of our bridge to the regional competition and put the bridge together live in a timed contest against other colleges and universities. After the bridge is assembled, it is loaded with 2500 lb to measure the vertical deflection and 50 lb to measure the horizontal deflection. Our bridge is ranked against other schools based on the categories of aesthetics, construction speed, lightness, stiffness, construction economy, structural efficiency, and cost estimation.

THANK YOU TO OUR 2023-2024 SPONSORS

Your generous support means the world to us! Thanks to your contributions, we were able to provide impactful experiences to our student members, afford steel and tools to construct our 2024 bridge, and send our team to compete at the 2024 Pacific Northwest Student Symposium in Vancouver, BC.

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