Waterloo Represents at Troitsky Bridge Building Competition

On Friday, March 2^nd, 2012 Tim Schnarr, Ann Sychterz, Omar Khaled, and Griff Ferguson from Civil 2012 represented Waterloo as competitors at the Troitsky Bridge Building Competition held in Montréal, Quebec.  They competed against thirty-two other teams this year for the ultimate prize of $1000.

For the past 28 years the Concordia Department of Engineering and Computer Science has played host to universities across North America for this competition. The focus of the competition is to build a bridge out of popsicle sticks, craft glue, toothpicks, and dental floss. Contestants are graded on five main aspects of bridge design and performance: originality, predicted ultimate capacity (predicted load before failure), ultimate capacity (actual load before failure), strength to weight ratio, and deflection. The competition is funded by the Canadian Society of Civil Engineers (CSCE) with individual teams receiving funding from their own departments, organizations such as WEEF or EngSoc, or out of their own pockets.

This is the second year the University of Waterloo has participated in this competition. The bridge design is a simple A-frame construction (shown in the photograph). The load is applied at the top of the bridge and the bridge must be able to sustain a load until either bridge components fail or the point underneath the load deflects down by more than 50 mm. This year the team’s bridge carried a load of 288 kg  (about the weight of four people) made of a popsicle stick laminate. The bridge failed as a result of shear stress concentrations at the connection between the tension member and compression members. The mode of failure was tear-out of the dowels linking the two members together.

The competition will be held again in Montréal next year around the same time. Younger years are encouraged to get involved in this competition and to represent the university. If you are interested please talk to one of the current team members and the CSCE student chapter on campus. This competition is a lot of fun and tests your knowledge of engineering and construction. Also, the competition is not limited to just Civil Engineers, so apply away! You can find more information at http://troitsky.ca/ and to see videos of the bridges being loaded, check out Concordia’s Youtube channel at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNvUamxXldI.