A group of recent Tufts graduates won a prize in the 2007 "Big Beam" competition for their design of a concrete beam. The competition was sponsored by the New-Jersey based Sika Corporation, a company that supplies products to the construction industry.
Student engineers Carlo Jacob (E '07, GE '10), Duncan Kopp (E '07), Brian Mackey (E '07) and Heather Shields (E '07) designed a beam that earned them a second- place prize in the Northeast region of the United Stated by meeting criteria that rewarded durable, low-cost, low-weight beams and accurate predictions about the beams' cracking load.
Tufts Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor of the Practice Brian Brenner helped the students as they constructed and tested a 16-foot beam.
The students predicted "certain characteristics of the beam, such as how much it will hold and how much it will deflect or bend," Shields said.
The experiment was done as part of the four students' capstone project. For their second-place finish, they won $750 as well as other prizes.
School of Engineering Communications Specialist Julia Keller said the results of the contest will be officially announced online in a few days.
- by Gio Russonello
