SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY STEEL BRIDGE

COMPETITION TEAM
2016 AI SC/ASCE STEEL BRI DGE UPDATE

NOVEMBER 2015

HISTORY OF THE SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY STEEL BRIDGE TEAM

The Syracuse University steel bridge team, as it exists today, was reestablished on campus at the advent of
the 2012 fall semester. This reestablishment of the team was the first time in over a decade that this
organization existed and was recognized by the university. Fortunately for the newly formed steel bridge team,
there existed one faculty member with AISC/ASCE steel bridge competition experience, Dr. Eric M. Lui. With
this guidance and the collective ambition of the steel bridge team, Syracuse University entered into its first
regional steel bridge regional conference in approximately 11 years.
The leadership of this years steel bridge competition have amassed a knowledge of the competition and its
nuances by learning from both the amazing strides and critical failures of the Syracuse University steel bridge
entries, and the entries of other colleges, institutes, and universities, since reemerging at the 2013 steel bridge
conference. Meeting the load carrying criteria set by the AISC/ASCE Steel Bridge guidelines has never been
an issue for the steel bridge designs developed by the students at Syracuse. However, refining, optimizing,
and fabricating the structures over the years has proven to be the biggest challenge for past teams. Each
year, the steel bridge design team has made meaningful advancements in bridge design by focusing on one
or two specific components of the bridge, whether it be material efficiency, stiffness, ease of fabrication, or
ease of construction at the competition. This year, the 2016 team has spent innumerable design hours
struggling to develop a comprehensive design that addresses most, if not all, of the major points that this
years bridge will be evaluated on at the 2016 regional conference at the University at Buffalo.
2015 UPSTATE NEW YORK CONFERENCE // USMC, WEST POINT, NY
The 2015 steel bridge team accomplished a number of goals that were set by the Syracuse University team
at the conclusion of the 2014 regional competition at Cornell University. The primary concerns of the 2015
team included deflection minimization and efficient use of time and materials. The final design produced from
these concerns was an overtruss bridge that, when loaded to capacity, proved highly rigid. The rigidity of the
structure stemmed from two primary components; (1) the use of larger steel sections on the top chord of the
truss and (2) setting the tolerance of the CNC connections to 5/1000. Such a high tolerance in the design of
the CNC connections resulted in a significant reduction in free movement at the joint, considerably reducing
the total deflection of the structure.
Though the design of the 2015 bridge proved to be very efficient and rigid in theory, the fabrication,
construction, and ultimate fate of the bridge proved otherwise. The primary issue with the 2015 design was
centered around the CNC connections and the selected tolerance of these parts. Though the parts were easily
added to the bridge component, their late arrival to the Syracuse University team was consistently slowing the
fabrication process throughout the spring of 2016, forcing the team to complete fabrication a mere 72 hours
before departing for West Point.
The late completion of the fabrication phase for the 2015 bridge left little time to practice its construction in a
timed setting. At the competition at West Point, this lack of timed construction practice proved fatal in the
evaluated construction of the bridge. One of the primary issues faced in the time construction was the fact that
the bridge, as it was being constructed, deflected significantly, as the overtruss was not complete. This
excessive deflection led to a number of the connections being out of the design tolerance of 5/1000, making
it exceedingly difficult to force bolts through the connections. This unaccounted for phenomena cost the build
team invaluable time when constructing the bridge. The cumulative loss in time from these connections ended
up making the total construction time far larger than expected, effectively removing the 2015 Syracuse
University steel bridge team from contending in the timed construction portion of the competition.

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY | STEEL BRIDGE COMPETITION TEAM

NOTABLE ACCOMPLISHMENTS
In the short time since the Syracuse University Steel Bridge Team was reestablished on our campus, the
team has been able to make considerable strides at each of the annual AISC/ASCE steel bridge regional
conferences for the Upstate, NY region. These accomplishments are detailed in the list below:
YEAR
2013

CONFERENCE
Rochester Institute of Technology
Rochester, NY

2014

Cornell University
Ithaca, NY

2nd Place

Display

2015

United States Military Academy

West Point, NY

1st Place

Oral Presentation

2nd

NOTABLE ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Place
Oral Presentation

2016 AISC/ASCE STEEL BRIDGE COMPETITION

THE DESIGN
The inspiration for this years bridge came primarily from the failure of the 2015 bridge, as the 2015 bridge
failed when a weld at a critical joint split. Our team designs and fabricates the bridge fully. The design
complexity, combined with our lack of experience with welding, contributed to the overall failure of the
structure. Prior to reading the rules for this years competition, we sought to keep the design as simple as
possible. The rest of the inspiration for this years design came after reading the rules for the competition. Last
years rules are similar to this years, except, that during construction, the river that must be spanned cannot
be crossed by any member of the build team, and a minimum clearance of 16 must be maintained over the
entire span of the bridge. Taking those criteria into consideration we decided to develop a girder style bridge.
Before developing the design for the bridge, we created both flexural and shear envelopes, consisting of all of
the load cases described in the competition rules using a 1.6 factored load. A 1.6 factored load was used
instead of a 1.2 factored load to compensate for the shortcomings of the structural analysis software used in
the design, STAAD Pro. These envelopes were developed to secure a general comprehension of the forces
acting on the structure. In the development of these envelopes, the bridge was assumed to act like as a simply
supported frame, simplifying the calculation of the reactions and forces. We know that the bridge will behave
more like an indeterminate structure resting on two pins causing a negative moment about the fixed
connections at the joints between the legs and girder ultimately shifting the maximum moment down a degree.
The 2016 bridge will have a span of 206 placing the center of the legs at the centerline of the footing areas.
The bridge will be 38 wide and 3 tall. This years team cycled through four design variations, all of which
employed the same envelope. The four variable designs consisted of a common stacked girder system with
modifications to the details of the web and flanges. The top girder of all four designs consisted of a space
frame in order assist in the alleviation of lateral deformations. Two of the four designs employed a mirroring
of the top girder about its longitudinal axis, with one design angled at the bottom girder to the mid-point of the
leg. The other two designs consisted of a bottom girder utilizing a modified I-section with an open web, again
one of those two designs was angled the ends of the bottom chord to the mid-point of the legs. Since the
maximum member envelope is 3x4x6, we decided to span the length with eight members along the top
girder at 26, seven across the bottom girder, again, at 26, and two short pieces at 13. All members utilize
a staggered brick pattern in their construction. After modeling all designs, the team decided to use the design
consisting of a space truss on top and a modified I-section with an open web straight across the span of the
bridge. This decision was made after taking into consideration not only structural efficiency, but constructability
and fabrication.

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY | NOVEMBER 2015

The goal of the 2016 team is to avoid failure and lower the construction time for this years competition, while
taking into great consideration material efficiency and ease of fabrication. To accomplish this, this years
design was developed using a factored load. The development and refinement of the design was spanned
over the length of six weeks during the 2015 fall semester, until the refinements and iterative analyses yielded
a design that this years team was satisfied with. Through the optimization process, we have adjusted web
orientation, leg design, lateral bracing, and allocation of steel to best optimize the efficiency of each member
under the consideration of total bridge weight. Our current design has a calculated weight of 190 lbs (via
STAAD Pro), a maximum vertical deflection of ~1.0, and a maximum lateral deflection of ~0.5, all under a
1.6 factored load. Under a non-factored, realistic load our current design has a maximum vertical deflection
of 0.44, a maximum lateral deflection of 0.28, and no member experiences a stress greater than 28000 psi
in either tension or compression.
The design of the 2016 bridge leads us to believe that we will be highly competitive in the stiffness category
at a marginalized sacrifice of weight. Currently, our team is in the process of finalizing the design of
connections and determining how to protect the structure during transportation such that nothing will get
damaged. As our team is only in its fourth year of competition and the fact still remains that this bridge will be
100% student fabricated, the design team felt it necessary to employ a fairly conservative design in terms of
member weight to ensure the success of the structure in deflection, as this was the downfall of the Syracuse
University bridge at the 2015 conference at West Point. This year, our team has decided to sacrifice
competitiveness in the lightness category in an attempt to be competitive across other judging criteria. We
are fully aware of our limitations as a team, and hope that future teams can build upon our efforts, perform
better, and have a chance to compete at the national steel bridge competition.
Design Figures
2.5
2
1.5
1
Case 1

Shear Kips

0.5

Case 2
Case 3

0
0

10

15

20

-0.5

Case 4
Case 5
Case 6

-1
-1.5
-2
-2.5

Distance
Figure 1: Shear Envelope - 2016 AISC/ASCE Steel Bridge Loading Scenarios

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY | STEEL BRIDGE COMPETITION TEAM

18
16
14
12
Case 1
Case 2

10

Case 3
Case 4

Case 5
6

Case 6

4
2
0
0

10

15

20

25

Figure 2: Flexural Envelope - 2016 AISC/ASCE Steel Bridge Loading Scenarios

Figure 3: Perspective Render of the 2016 Bridge Design - STAAD Pro

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY | NOVEMBER 2015

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY 2016 STEEL BRIDGE TEAM | NOTABLE FIGURES

NAME

POSITION

YEAR

Steel Bridge Captain

2016

Gabriel Amaya

Steel Bridge Asst. Captain

2016

Matthew Rolfe

ASCE Student Body President

2016

Conor Driscoll

Joanna Ding

ASCE Student Body Vice President

2016

Yair Simonson

Structural Analyst STAAD Pro

2016

Scott Girouard

CAD Drafting

2016

Michelle Dube

Fundraising

2016

Steven Lisowski

Underclassman Outreach

2017

Joshua Saxton

Underclassman Outreach

2017

SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY | STEEL BRIDGE COMPETITION TEAM