Building A Better Beam

UMKC #1 in Midwest

The Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute (PCI) has spoken. Nobody builds better beams than we do.

“We,” in this particular case, is a joint team of engineering students from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla. The team placed #1 in the Midwest Region in PCI’s annual student competition.

For those of us who are uninitiated, that means that Timothy Hines, Kristen Reynolds and Mayuri Patil from UMKC’s School of Computing and Engineering; and their collaborative partners Eli Hernandez, Alex Griffin, Hayder Alghazali and Kaylea Smith of MS&T, spent months designing an 18-foot beam of precast-prestressed concrete. In the competition, the beams are subjected to ever-increasing weight loads until they fail.
The students joined forces for the third time to compete as one team. UMKC students were responsible for the design and construction while the students at MS&T conducted the testing for the big beam. Coreslab Structures of Kansas City made the beam.

Tim Hines, a recent graduate of UMKC’s Civil Engineering Graduate Program and Big Beam Captain, enjoyed the competition but saw the professional benefit, too.

“I practiced my skills in planning, construction, testing, and writing. And it was great to see how well our beam performed,” Hines said.

Sponsorship by a PCI producer such as Coreslab is required, and Coreslab has always enthusiastically stepped up. As sponsors, Coreslab provided the labor and materials to fabricate the team’s design, and transported the beam from Kansas City to Rolla.

The concrete beam was placed across a 16 foot span, then tested and evaluated for strength, cracking load, ductility and cost. The beam was continuously loaded in 2,000 pound increments, resisting a capacity which included the dead load of the beam plus two live loads of 11,000 pounds, until failure.

Because of their composite and design features, the UMKC-MS&T beam was determined to be the strongest, sturdiest, best beam made. Prizes are awarded for best performance in specific categories, and students must explain the structural design and the concrete mix used in their beams.

Team faculty advisors are Ganesh Thiagarajan, Ph.D. (UMKC School of Computing and Engineering), and John Myers, Ph.D. (MS&T). Both faculty members liked working together, as well as the idea of student competition based on cooperation.

UMKC team member Mayuri Patil, another recent graduate in Civil Engineering, found the teamwork approach stimulating.

“Brainstorming led each member to put forward different concepts,” Patil said, “and I realized how much engineering needs creativity and strong logical design. Our results have encouraged me to experiment, make mistakes and keep learning.”

The UMKC-MS&T team placed fifth overall in the national contest phase.

Kevin Truman, Dean of the UMKC School of Computing and Engineering, noted “It’s great to see success such as this, but more importantly I admire your commitment to work as a team, to collaborate between the campuses and to use your abilities to their fullest. I am most proud of the fact that you made these commitments and followed through.”

Big Beam team member and civil engineering student Kristen Reynolds said, “I have assumed the head role for the UMKC Big Beam team. We’re so excited about this year’s competition that we have already begun some preliminary design work. Because of our success this year, we’re thinking about constructing a similar beam. However, nothing is set in stone.”

Or concrete.


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