UTC civil engineering students work on a concrete canoe
photo by Angela Foster/UTC
For the first time since 2015, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga will host the American Society of Civil Engineers Mid-South Student Symposium.
From Thursday, March 30, through Saturday, April 1, UTC will welcome more than 300 civil engineering students from 14 visiting universities to participate in various technical and non-technical competitions and events throughout Chattanooga. Many of the events are open to the media and the general public.
The ASCE symposium enhances civil engineering students’ undergraduate experience through applied design and problem-solving motivated by the spirit of competition.
The conference is designed to foster camaraderie among students and networking with industry professionals.
Symposium highlights include the Concrete Canoe Competition and the Steel Bridge Competition.
“Concrete canoe is a bit of an oxymoron, right?” said Chris Frishcosy, director of labs for the Department of Civil Engineering at UTC. “The students are tasked with designing the canoe shape based on the rules and regulations prescribed by ASCE. Once they have the shape of the canoe and the hull built out, they will start working on a mix design that once again meets those regulations—a lightweight concrete that meets requirements based on the regulations. It is buoyant so that it can float and form a canoe—and strong enough to hold the weight of the crew members racing during the competition.
The concrete canoe race will occur on March 31 at Chester Frost Park in Hixson.
In the Steel Bridge Competition, a collaborative effort of the ASCE and the American Institute of Steel Construction, students must design and fabricate members of a bridge and their connections with the mindset of economy, constructability, strength and stiffness. The bridges are built in a timed event before being weighted and then tested under specified lateral and vertical loading conditions with recorded measurements of deflection.
“The steel bridge takes the entire academic year to prepare for,” Mr. Frishcosy said. “It’s a very construction-heavy process. They have to do a whole pivot with the bridge to make sure they can connect it; there’s a theoretical river taped out you are not allowed to cross. Your construction procedure has to be developed in such a way that you can build the bridge across that river without a team member stepping across or into that area.”
The top three teams in those and other ASCE-sanctioned events will be invited to go to national competitions.
Along with UTC, other institutions participating in the weekend festivities include the University of Arkansas, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Arkansas State University, Bryan College, Case Western Reserve University, Christian Brothers University, Harding University, Lipscomb University, University of Memphis, UT Knoxville, UT Martin, Tennessee State University, Tennessee Tech University and Vanderbilt University.
ASCE Mid-South Student Symposium sponsors include TVA, AISC, Croy Engineering, Geosyntec, Barge Design Solutions, Barnett Jones Wilson, LLC, March Adams & Associates, Wright Brothers Construction Company, Inc, Neel-Schaffer Engineering, NOVONIX, Brooks and Associates, Terracon Consultants, Inc. and Pure Graphite.