ASU's Student Chapter of ASCE attends 2022 Intermountain Southwest Symposium
School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment
Preparing a 21st-century workforce that is ready to harness the power of technology to make the world a better place.
The following event recap was written by Jillian Barcena, Treasurer of ASU's ASCE Student Chapter.
On April 13th, 33 members of ASU's ASCE student chapter departed to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas to participate in the annual Intermountain Southwest Symposium to compete against 12 other universities.?
Concrete Canoe Display
On Thursday, our concrete canoe team displayed our prototype and presented to the judges. Many complements were given from other students, advisors, and even students' parents associated with our various competitors regarding our canoe's smoothness, aesthetic design, and overall theme cohesion! The canoe was developed over the course of the entire year, involving months of concrete mix testing in the fall, mold construction in the winter, and concrete pouring, curing, and hand-sanding (which alone took 1.5 months of daily sanding sessions) in the spring. Our captains and volunteers were led by our project manager, Gabbi Stadler.?
Steel Bridge Display
Our steel bridge team also displayed their rainbow prototype, keeping to the theme--the most visually-interesting of the competing bridges by far! Despite a significant knowledge gap with no guidance from previous steel bridge members, our team designed, analyzed, and fabricated a modular bridge this past spring. Members purchased steel stock and learned how to weld the parts themselves. Alex Rubio served as the project manager.?
Timber-strong build team competition
Thursday was our timber-strong build team's primary competition day, building the two-story "Flavorcity" structure in just 1.5 hours! The timber team modeled, analyzed, and designed the structure this past spring. Prior to the conference, the team pre-fabricated and painted the walls and cut some structural members. However, it was up to them to construct the building under time constraints. Our timber project manager was Caleb Siff.?
Concrete canoe race day!
领英推荐
?Friday was our concrete canoe race day! The concrete canoe teams traveled to Lake Mead for the day's events. The day began with a swamp test which involved the total submersion of our canoe underwater--if it did not return to the surface due to its own buoyancy, it would not be permitted to race. Our canoe, Speedy Unicorn, passed with flying "colors." The races themselves were also very successful for ASU. In the women's slalom and women's speed events, we placed second of nine teams. In the men's slalom and men's speed events as well as the four-person co-ed, we dominated the times, placing first in all three. The paddlers were captained by Peter Nguyen.
Steel bridge load test
Saturday was our final conference day. The steel team displayed their bridge's modular assembly process as well as performed their loading tests.?
Poster presentation
?Our Sustainable Solutions team presented their poster. This was part of a newer competition that challenged student chapters to develop a theoretical "tiny house" community design which would provide publicly accessible and affordable housing to serve a city's homeless population. The teams were asked to develop the plan along with a site layout and a digital 3-dimensional model. Christina Galanis and Cameron Morgan worked as co-project managers.?
?Our day conference concluded with the banquet. ASU received the following awards:
We thank all of our attendees for their involvement in our technical competitions. We also thank our non-attending team members. None of our project managers could have done it without you. We hope you stay involved next year! We also hope that those of you unable to join a team find yourselves inspired to join a competition next year. The conference was great fun!?
Next year's conference will be hosted by University of Nevada, Reno.?