The Christmas basket was a huge success for the chapter. We collected over $1727.22 to be used to provide food to needy people in Terre Haute. The following page is a breakdown of the results of the 1997 Christmas basket collection done by our Chapter. The largest contributor was the Mechanical Engineering Dept. with $201.00. The largest Collector was Ben Merkling with $225.71. Thanks once again to everyone who participated. It will be hard to do better next year, but we are going to try anyway.
 

ASCE CHRISTMAS BASKET				Contributors	Donation		Collectors	Collected
Hawker	Scharp	$41.60		ME Dept.	$201.00		Merkling	$225.71
	Chem Dept.	$25.00		Banquet	$167.00		Lienart	$201.00
	Admissions	$23.00		Triangle	$138.44		Tedrick	$156.90
	Tempelton	$22.31		CE Dept.	$117.00		Nemeth	$139.78
	Hadley	$18.45		ATW	$108.71		Mize	$138.44
TOTAL		$130.36		Faculty (HU/SO)	$105.21		Hawker	$130.36
Tedrick	Faculty (HSS)	$105.21		SN	$100.00		Dimke	$100.00
	Faculty	$12.56		Chem Dept.	$90.00		Burch	$58.04
	Security	$2.25		Speed	$61.35		Edwards	$51.00
	Skinner	$36.88		CW	$53.98		Dr. McLean	$50.00
TOTAL		$156.90		PKA	$51.00		Rapplean	$40.00
Merkling	ATO	$108.71		Scharp	$41.60		Pigott	$35.00
	CE Dept.	$117.00		BSB	$40.00		Schwecke	$28.98
TOTAL		$225.71		Union	$39.43		Ellett	$25.00
Dr. McLean	Chem Dept.	$50.00		FIJI	$38.68		Westifield	$25.00
AFROTC		$27.00		Skinner	$36.88		Pownall	$17.93
Math Dept.		$20.50		Q X	$35.00		Rohe	$16.36
Davis	Comp Sci. Dept.	$14.00		AFROTC	$27.00		Ojala	$15.00
Ellett	CW	$25.00		LCA	$25.00		Davis	$14.00
ROTC		$20.22		EE Dept.	$24.00		Elliot	$14.00
Haug	Ph/AO Dept.	$10.00		Admissions	$23.00		Haug	$10.00
Leinart	ME Dept.	$201.00		Tempelton	$22.31
Edwards	PKA	$51.00		Math Dept.	$20.50
Pownall	Blumberg	$17.93		ROTC	20.22
Ojala	Mees	$15.00		Athletic Dept.	$19.36
Nemeth	Union	$39.43		Hadley	$18.45
	Speed	$61.35		Blumberg	$17.93
	EE Dept.	$24.00		AFW	$16.36
	ChE Dept.	$15.00		Mees	$15.00
TOTAL		$139.78		Comp. Sci. Dept.	$14.00
Pigott	Q X	$35.00		Deming	$14.00
Rohe	AFW	$16.36		Faculty	$12.56
Schwecke	CW	$28.98		Ph/AO Dept.	$10.00
Burch	FIJI	$38.68		Security	$2.25
	Athletic Dept.	$19.36			$1,727.22
TOTAL		$58.04
Banquet		$167.00
Dimke	SN	$100.00
Elliot	Deming	$14.00			TOTAL
Rapplean	BSB	$40.00			BASKET
Mize	Triangle	$138.44			$1,727.22
Westifield	LCA	$25.00

 

TRIP TO ATLANTA

by Sean Stoughton

On Friday, January 16, Dr. Descoteaux took four students, Ben Merkling, current president, Sean Stoughton, current treasurer, Brent Nemeth, past president, and Pete Haug, past secretary, to the ASCE Workshop for Student Chapter Leaders (WSCL). In addition to our chapter, the workshop was attended by chapters from Michigan to Florida. The conference is designed to improve leadership in ASCE student chapters and to help chapters become more successful. The workshop consisted of leadership seminars lead by ASCE personnel and focus sessions for chapter improvement put on by students from specific chapters.

The conference started out Saturday morning with a short presentation by each chapter attending the conference. Most other chapters tried to brag about their steel bridge or concrete canoe, because that is about all they do. Ben Merkling, our president, talked about the awards we won last year and some of the major projects we had accomplished. When the presentations ended, he was asked to lead a focus session on community service projects because we won the National Community Service award last year. After the presentations, there was an activity that dealt with different leadership styles. In the afternoon we had a choice of several focus sessions to attend. Some of the focus sessions dealt with such things as fundraising, member recruitment, community service projects, hosting a regional/national competition, and how to make your chapter a national award winner. The day ended with a Presidential Reception.

After breakfast Sunday morning, there was another set of focus sessions on the same subjects as before. After the sessions, there were some final comments from the ASCE personnel, and the conference was adjourned. The conference was considered very informational by the people that attended, not only from the standpoint of learning new ways to improve the chapter, but we also found out a lot about other student chapters.

Golf Tournament Plans in the Works

By Jon Walls

The Cecil T. Lobo Student Chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology is sponsoring the Second Annual ASCE Golf Tournament for charity on May 2, 1998 at Idle Creek Golf Community in Terre Haute, Indiana. This year all of the proceeds will go to Habitat for Humanity of the Wabash Valley. Cost for this eighteen hole scramble tournament will be $50 per player. The tournament will be played as a four man scramble with a banker’s handicap. Prizes will consist of $300 for first place gross score and $300 first place net score. Both the second place gross and net scores will receive $200. There will also be prizes for closest to the pin and longest putt. There will be a cookout served for the players as they return from their round. If you are interested in either signing up a team, or becoming a hole sponsor for the tournament, please contact Jon Walls at 877-1575 extension 243 or Kathy Nicoson at 877-8352.

Concrete Canoe Program Resurrected

by J.D. Rohrer and Shawn Golden

Following a seven year layoff, the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology ASCE chapter will once again participate in the Great Lakes Regional Concrete Canoe Competition. For this contest, students must design and build a canoe with a minimum of 75% (by weight of solids) Portland cement. The canoe will then undergo a series of tests, including a flotation test proving that the canoe will float when filled with water, with both ends breaking the water surface. This canoe will compete in a distance course with two turns as well as a sprint race. The teams of two are include male, female, and co-ed.

The designing of the mixes began on January 3rd, and are still undergoing testing. Cylinders and slabs were made of each mix to find the lightest and strongest material for the canoe.

In order to build the canoe properly, sufficient forms must be made. The design work began during Winter break. Cross-sections from an old racing canoe were measured and plotted to full scale on AutoCAD. The mold construction was started on January 17th, and the canoe is almost ready for the final mix to be applied. The AutoCAD plots were glued onto sheets of ¾" plywood, and used as a guide to cut the accurate cross-sections. The cross-sections were then attached to a 2" x 4" frame, set on 11" center-to-center spacing. Once the framework was complete, 2" strips of 1/8" plywood were cutout and attached to the cross-sections to form the walls of the canoe. In the areas of sharp curvature along the bottom corners, 1" strips were used to form a smoother curve. The initial wooden form is finished, and exposed edges and curves are being sanded to create a more accurate canoe shape.

The next steps in the completion of the mold are the application of shrink wrap and the attachment of reinforcement. The shrink wrap will prevent the mix from leading between the plywood strips and make the removal of the mold easier. The reinforcement is ½" wire cloth, which must be accurately placed 1/8" from the mold in all areas. The final thickness of the canoe will be 3/8". The canoe will be coated with water sealant and paint, and finished with detailing.

The concrete will be placed during quarter break, and the curing process will continue through mid-April. At which time the racers will begin practicing with a local professional canoe racer. The competition will be held the first weekend of May. The contest also requires the schools to submit an 11 page design paper, and give a 5-minute oral presentation.

A special thanks to:

Joe Mize

Tim Rohe

Gary Pool

Greg Johnson

Phil Stevens

Shawn Golden

J.D. Rohrer

Tim Wuestefeld

Chris Boyd

Amber Ashlock

from:

Renee Schwecke

Innovative Arch Makes Connections Easy

by Seth Wurzel

This year's National Timber Bridge Competition will see many entries from Dr. Descoteaux's Timber Design course CE430. As part of the course, every student is required to participate in the competition by designing and fabricating a bridge, and finally submitting a design report to Mississippi State University to be judged by three officials. The design criteria consist of a timber bridge that will span 3 meters and have no individual member greater than 1.4 meters in length. The bridge should be able to support four point loads of 5 kilonewtons each for one hour simultaneously. The deflection will be measured at three points along the mid span and should not exceed 8 millimeters. However, the report should provide adequate calculations to show that the load can be supported at any point on the bridge deck without flexural or shear failure. Other criteria that the judges will take into consideration are the total weight of the bridge and the percentage of material that is non-wood. One design group consisting of five senior civil engineering students has designed a bridge utilizing a plywood arch in a very innovative fashion to help facilitate all of the connections.

The design group PWOBB, consisting of students Ryan Pownall, Seth Wurzel, Kelly Ojala, Jason Bunselmeier, and Donald Bales, will utilize a plywood arch that has the plies of the arch oriented parallel to the direction of loading. The arch will consist of four 3/4" thick plies cut to the correct shape of a parabola four inches deep. The group decided on a parabolic arch in order to model the bridge as a three-hinged arch. This means that the bridge will have no moment at the peak thus requiring minimal depth at mid span. This intern means the use of less material. With careful planning and construction methods, all of the connections to the arch can be notched easily by cutting out the notches before laminating the plies. The difficult part comes in notching the vertical members that will support the bridge deck above the arch. However, master craftsman Ryan Pownall assures that this can be done. All of the posts will be made from 2x4's that will be cut to half their width at the connections (3/4", same width as the piles!) and slid into the pre-notched arch. A hole will then be drilled and replaced with a wooden dowel to provide rigidity. By orienting the plywood in the same direction as the load, PWOBB is utilizing plywood's strongest axis and creating a very easy bridge to fabricate. The arches do not have to be formed and it will be very easy to fabricate two identical arches for both sides of the bridge.

The final design report will have been submitted on February 14 to Dr. Descoteaux for approval and fabrication should be completed in ample time to meet the submittal date of April 17 to Mississippi State.

The Obvious Choice

by Chad Leinart

Before coming to Rose-Hulman I had a decision to make. What do I want to do for the rest of my life? The obvious answer was to hit the lottery and do anything that I want, but I didn't see that happening. I then turned to my back-up plan. I knew that I wanted to do something that would give me a great deal of opportunity to do a great variety of things. I also wanted something that would allow me to do some design work, but also allow me the flexibility to be in the field as much as I would want to be. I say that because if I were only doing design work in an office I would end up going postal on my co-workers. I knew I needed to find an occupation that would allow me to do both things. The only thing that I could come up with was to be a Civil Engineer. I now know that no other profession would have given me what I wanted. I have been exposed to so many different things while here at Rose from being a civil engineering student that I know I wouldn't have been exposed to from any other major. I enjoy the community service that our ASCE chapter is known for, the field trips, the steel bridge, and of course all of the friends that I have made through my involvement with ASCE. To just think that I would have missed all of this to become a ME or a ChemE just makes me realize even more that I made the right decision for me by becoming a Civil. I can just hope that all of the fun and enjoyment that I have had so far will follow me out into the real world. Now that I think about it, I can't see any reason why the fun and enjoyment that I get out of being a Civil will stop just because I might graduate.

A Precast and Prestressed Field Trip

by Brad DeBruler

Precast and prestressed concrete has become widely used for structures in today's urban scenery. Why, though, have we seen this usage? Precast and prestressed concrete can be specifically designed to meet most construction requirements and offer: product quality, ease and speed of construction, reduced life-cycle cost, structural integrity and reliability, aesthetic appeal, and market competitiveness.

Some might wonder, though, how are these sometimes enormous panels made? This question was answered when I, along with other junior civil students, went to the American Precast Concrete, Inc. plant in Indianapolis.

The plant is able to make architectural and structural panels and t-beams. The architectural and structural panels are made by placing concrete in table like forms. These forms are made so that panels can be prestressed and/or modified to any architects desire. These forms are located inside the shop and about 50 feet long. The t-beams are constructed in outside forms, but they are equipped with heaters so production is able to be conducted through the winter months. These forms were roughly 100 yards in length.

The company has their own batch plant so they are able to make any color and strength of concrete. They also have a lab in which they can test concrete cylinders to ensure that a batch of concrete has reached it desired strength before shipping off panels.

The blue prints for the panels and t-beams are produced by the drafters and engineers at the company. For instance, blue prints for a job are given to them; then they take just the precast parts of the structure and make very detailed blue prints for each piece.

One more question a person might ask is who does this company sell their products to? They are about to start producing panels for the new Pacer Field House, they produced panels for the RCA (Hoosier) dome, and for Rose-Hulman's football stadium. Not bad work.

The trip was not completed, however, until we were given detailed instructions on how to get to the nearest bar by a member in the group.

Chapter Offers New Career Placement Service

by Brent Nemeth

The Cecil T. Lobo Student Chapter has done an excellent job in the past arranging events such as field trips, speakers, and community service projects. Year after year, the Student Chapter ranks as one of the top organizations of its kind in the country. However, the continued success of any organization is dependent upon that organization’s willingness to take on new and exciting activities. In addition to its customary events, the Student Chapter must be willing to adopt and sponsor events that have never before been tried.

In the 1997 term, the Student Chapter has added two new activities to its itinerary. One of these events was the 1^st Annual ASCE Golf Tournament for Charity hosted by the Student Chapter as a fundraiser for the American Red Cross of the Wabash Valley. Over $1000.00 was donated to the Red Cross. The second item in this discussion is the ASCE job catalogue - a publication that lists the members of the civil engineering Class of 1998 and contains their compiled resumes. This catalogue will be sent to potential employers in the business community. Its purpose is to help link those civil engineering seniors who are seeking careers with potential employers. This publication is the first of its kind for the Student Chapter and there is hope for its success, so that the Student Chapter will be able to continue to provide this service to both students and employers in the following years to come.

Senior ASCE members were asked to create their resumes on a Word resume template. These individual resumes were then mailed electronically to senior Seth Wurzel, who edited them and added them to the catalogue. Seth, with the help of Dr. Descoteaux, also arranged to have a special cover created for the catalogue at a local print store. This publication should be available to businesses by the beginning of the Spring Quarter.

The job catalogue, however, will not be the only career service provided by the chapter to its members. In addition to it, the Student Chapter, in the near future, will provide the service of listing its members’ resumes on the web. All members, freshmen to seniors, are strongly encouraged to perfect their resumes and submit them to Dr. Descoteaux. They will then be added to a resume section located within the Rose-Hulman ASCE web page. This is a very good opportunity for those underclassmen interested in finding summer employment. The more places that one posts his or her resume, the better chance one has in getting hired.
 

What an Impressive Home

by Josh Williford

On Wednesday, February 4th, seventeen ASCE members and faculty took a field trip to Mari Hulman-George's new house, which is in the process of being constructed. Upon arriving at the site of the construction, just a mile from Rose-Hulman's campus, we were met by the architect in charge, Harold Baker of Baker Harold Architects located in Terre Haute. Mr. Baker first gave a brief description of what had gone into getting the house planned and talked about some of the unique materials and other items of the house. For instance, the slate that was to be used for the flooring was ordered from South Africa and all of the doors, made of recycled wood, were specially ordered from Santa Fe, New Mexico. After giving us an overview of the project Mr. Baker then gave us a tour of the 11,000 sq. ft. house.

The house itself is magnificent. It has a Southwest look and is dominated by heavy timber columns and beams. The roofing material is slate shingles, which had to be individually cut. Connected to the front of the house is an enormous portico that features arches of heavy timber. Masonry stone is used for the base of the portico and for the many fireplaces. Also connected to the house by a short open-air walkway is a four car garage matching the style of the house. The front of the house is a wall of windows reaching to the roof line about forty feet above and separated by heavy timber.

The inside of the house is even more impressive than the outside. All of the ceilings in the house are hardwood ceilings made from birch. The house has many triangular sky lights which Mr. Baker said caused much grief for the structural engineers designing the house. The foyer is very open with an elevated ceiling and a second story balcony. Hanging from the ceiling above the stairway in the foyer is a massive chandelier made from deer antlers. Also in the foyer next to the stairway is where one of two 30 foot totem poles will stand. The other, being made in Alaska, will stand near the portico outside. The house has five bedrooms, of which the master bedroom has an elevated ceiling of about thirty-five feet, a large kitchen, a study, a recreation room in the basement, a storm shelter, and a dog room. The storm shelter is a 15' X 15' room in the basement that is made of 12 inch thick concrete walls with plans for vault doors to close the room off in case of emergency. The dog room is a 30' X 40' room next to the kitchen enclosed by windows, with nine sky lights, and will be used to house the many greyhounds that Mari Hulman-George "rescues" after their racing days are over. She also plans to have an animal hospital next to her master bedroom to insure the safety and health of the dogs. After touring the house we concluded the field trip in the garage, in which the upper level will eventually be turned into an apartment, where Mr. Baker had a short question-and-answer session.

A Freshman Talks About Habitat for Humanity Workday

by Angela Clark

Participating in the Habitat for Humanity workday for ASCE was an excellent experience for me this past quarter. I really enjoyed meeting some of the upperclassmen civil engineering students. Not only did I have fun participating, but now due to all of the hammering I did, my biceps are twice the size they were before. Even though Habitat for Humanity is thrilled to have us volunteer our time to help them, I am positive they were more than delighted to see me leave after one day of working with them. I probably put them in debt by wasting an enormous amount of nails due to my inability to hammer correctly. As a freshmen civil engineering student I am very impressed with the American Society of Civil Engineering. I think this organization seems to be very organized and the students seem to be extremely involved. I am pleased to know that there is a lot of interaction between the professors and students in the civil helping out, but I also got to meet many civil engineering students from Rose.