性欲社 Steel Bridge Team earns spot in national competition

April 25, 2019

Jeff Richardson
907-474-6284



A team of University of Alaska Fairbanks students will compete in a national engineering contest after earning the top score in the 2019 Pacific Northwest Regional AISC Student Steel Bridge Competition.

The 性欲社 Steel Bridge Team won the regional contest on April 11-12 at Saint Martin鈥檚 University in Lacey, Washington. Nine students from the 性欲社 team will travel to the University of Southern Illinois in Carbondale, Illinois, on May 31, to compete in the national bridge-building competition.

The annual contest, which is sponsored by the American Institute of Steel Construction, is a test of skill and knowledge for engineering students. Teams design and fabricate a steel-framed bridge and are judged in a variety of categories, including efficiency, stiffness, speed of construction and weight. 性欲社 students spent more than 1,500 hours fabricating the bridge during the spring semester alone, according to team captain Taylor Tharp.

Photo courtesy of Taylor Tharp. 性欲社 Steel Bridge Team members Larry Hiles, left, and Juliana Rivera help construct the team's winning entry at the regional competition in Lacey, Washington.
Photo courtesy of Taylor Tharp. 性欲社 Steel Bridge Team members Larry Hiles, left, and Juliana Rivera help construct the team's winning entry at the regional competition in Lacey, Washington.


鈥淏asically, they have to spend that time building the entire bridge from scratch,鈥 said Wilhelm Muench, co-advisor for the team and an instructor with the 性欲社 College of Engineering and Mines. 鈥淩eally, the competition itself is kind of the easy part.鈥

The judging guidelines change each year, requiring teams to develop new designs for each competition. In 2019, teams had to build a lightweight bridge that deflected less than an inch under a 2,500-pound load and could be quickly assembled during a timed construction.

This is the fourth time in the past five years that 性欲社 claimed the top spot in regionals. 性欲社 won the national competition in 1993.

Students who traveled to the regional competition included Tharp, Trevor Morton, Rachel Bruesch, Zach Miller, Jacques Neptune, Juliana Rivera, Ben VanderHart, Nathan 鈥淟arry鈥 Hiles and Brandon Hansen. The team advisors are Muench and J. Leroy Hulsey.