Abstract
From ancient masonry to modern high-rises, societies have long attempted to design structures to withstand the forces of both nature and humans. My capstone project is the AISC (American Institute of Steel Construction) Student Steel Bridge Competition. This is a student competition where teams design and construct a steel bridge that must withstand a load of 2,500 pounds, meant to represent the forces placed on the bridge by pedestrians. My STS research will investigate earthquake-resilient infrastructure and the sociotechnical factors that affect it. My goal is to understand how social, economic, and technical factors all play a role in the level of acceptable risk integrated into building codes and the construction of infrastructure in relation to earthquake resilience. Both topics are relevant to the field of civil engineering because they involve designing against forces imposed by nature and humans. The Steel Bridge Competition explores designing with structural efficiency and constructability in mind which is pertinent to any civil engineering project. My STS research involves looking at how different actors affect the development of building codes which are relevant across the field of civil engineering.
For the Steel Bridge Competition, my team designed and constructed a 1:10 scale model of a theorized pedestrian crossing over the Rio Grande River. The competition rules outlined constraints for the bridge height, length, material, bolted connections, and more. Each bridge had to resist the given loading conditions while staying below a maximum deflection threshold. Teams were judged based on the time it takes to construct the bridge, the number of people used to construct it, and the bridge weight. For the design of this bridge, the team used SAP2000, Revit, and SolidWorks to model and optimize the bridge structure. Working with Liphart Steel, we procured the necessary steel parts before welding, cutting, and bending as necessary to meet our design plans. Finally, we constructed our bridge during the timed construction portion of the competition.
Our team was extremely successful and placed third out of nine teams at the Virginia Regional Symposium. Our bridge weighed 380 pounds and was constructed in just under 20 minutes. In addition to third place overall, the team placed third in structural efficiency, second in lightness, third in construction economy, second in cost estimation, and second in construction speed.
My STS research explored how social, economic, and technical factors affect the level of acceptable risk integrated into building codes in relation to seismic resilience. Although building codes are backed by mathematical calculations, many other factors affect them as well. I investigated how historical earthquakes, innovations in technology, and social factors have all shaped building codes.
Ultimately, I concluded that seismic design and the associated codes are more than just technical; they are the result of years of development incorporating social, technical, and economic constraints. Engineers face the challenge of designing structures that can resist the unpredictable lateral forces of earthquakes. As seen by the case studies of San Francisco and Haiti, seismic design depends on prior knowledge and technical expertise but also proper implementation of building codes and proper construction techniques. Through the Actor-Network Theory, it can be seen how different stakeholders affect and are affected by seismic building codes, including how different stakeholders value seismic resistance. Policymakers, engineers, developers, and the general public all face economic consequences in response to changes made to seismic building codes.
