The Concrete Project

Tuesday, April 28 was a busy day in the Quigley courtyard! ARC 362 (Structures II) students were busy pouring their concrete beams for testing next week. Professor Robert H. Swenson has taught this course for many years and includes hands-on learning activities for the students.

Athena Sandravelis (L) and Shane Healey (R) have built their forms, placed the tension reinforcing, and are ready to begin the pouring of the concrete.

Here is a closer view of the beam design.

After allowing the concrete to cure for seven days, the students will load their beam designs and test them to determine how strong their creations are.

Students Yuko Aoki and Andrew Bevis work on their beam design. Talk about an international project! Yuko is from Japan and Andrew was raised right here in Jackson County, Illinois!

Time to Test the Structures!

An annual highlight of Architecture 362: Structures II is the testing of the wood structures designed and built by students. Working in teams of two, students must construct a support that spans a 4'-0" circle and that carries 150# of bricks. Doesn't sound so hard, does it? Well, the challenge is that only one 2x4 may be used to design the structure. In the image above, Adam Burant and Brandon Garnett have loaded their structure with a point load. Below, they are weighing their structure. Bonus points were available for the team with the lightest structure that survived the loading.

In addition to surviving the bricks placed as a point load, the structure was also loaded with the same weight as a uniform load. Several students' structures survived both loads, and in some cases, also survived having the students themselves stand on their structure!

Architecture 362 is taught by Associate Professor Bob Swenson, who took the images used here.