TWO CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY ENGINEERING STUDENTS

BRIDGE INTO THE FUTURE AND LEAVE A PARTING GIFT

CLEVELAND - Bridging to the future, two graduating seniors in structural engineering had fun putting their classroom knowledge to work and left a parting gift to campus and the professors that helped them along the way.

It was a stealthy operation that took 10 hours into the very early morning hours, but when Engineering Professors Dario Gasparini and Arthur Huckelbridge arrived on campus last Monday, they and others were greeted with a 90-foot bridge built by graduating seniors Christopher Toth, of Columbus, and Donald Cartwright, of Alliance. "I designed the bridge in my head," says Toth, who added he had the confidence from doing a number of other large bridge models that it would "work." Toth then fabricated the unique single-cable suspension bridge in pieces of two to three feet from thousands of plastic K'Nex parts in his dorm room. It took about 36 hours over the past six weeks.

Then he enlisted the help of Cartwright, a fellow civil engineering major to help assemble it over 10 hours last Monday. The two had worked on a retractable stadium roof capstone project for their engineering degrees.

The students finally tied the last knot on the anchors about 1 a.m. Monday morning in assembling the bridge in front of the White Building and near Bingham Building where the two had many of their classes.

The two wanted to show the aesthetics of structural engineering and some of those classroom lessons they had learned in Gasparini's classes. "It is not easy to achieve a geometry that is realistic, proportional, and representative of true suspension bridges, but the students did it," said Gasparini, giving his students some high praise.

Gasparini adds, that the "monocable" and the inclined hangers is a modern design that has only been used a few times around the world. Toth's design uses a signal cable zigzag construction, making it unique, according to the student who will work with the Ohio Department of Transportation this summer before starting graduate school at George Tech in the fall where he will study transportation engineering. Cartwright will do a summer internship at TranSystem Corporation in Cleveland. He too will pursue a master's degree at the Case School of Engineering after receiving his bachelor's degree on Sunday, May 17, during Commencement ceremonies in Veale Convocation Center.

"The students had previously used the components as part of their senior project presentation of a retractable cable roof, which was also very nice," says Gasparini. What also pleased the professor was that "opportunities for engineering students to express their creativity are sometimes limited by the intensity of engineering curricula, and our students designed and constructed the model on their own initiative, independent of faculty!"

If this bridge were made of steel, Toth says he believes it would be a good bridge, but qualifies that he is unable to test the strength because it is made of plastic. The bridge did withstand this week's rainy weather.

For someone who studies bridge strengths, "I'm really impressed with their bridge," said Huckelbridge in a cell phone conversation. Huckelbridge commented as he dangled from the Inner Belt Bridge over the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland where he was inspecting the bridge's structure for deterioration. "I was surprised to see the bridge," adds Huckelbridge. So were others students, who asked the two whether this was a class project. Cartwright says most students were surprised to find out they were doing it just for the fun of it. "Both have been exceptionally good students and fun to have in class," adds Huckelbridge.

The bridge brought back memories for Huckelbridge who also built bridges with Tinker Toys as a kid but never reached the size of the Toth's design. Toth has built a number of bridges, an Eiffel Tower, and a Ferris wheel, but never built one for a campus display. Cartwright and Toth had prior experience in building bridges as part of their campus education by participating in steel bridge competitions over the past years. In those contests, they had 30 minutes to construct a 20-foot bridge that would hold 150 pounds and remain stable without shifting beyond a set limit.

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