Civil Engineering Students Place Third in National Competition

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Geo-Challenge team members Matt Nanak, Morgan Race, Hayley Moore and Omar Conte, and faculty adviser Richard Coffman.

A team of civil engineering students from the University of Arkansas placed third in the national Geo-Challenge competition. This event was a part of the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Geo-Institute annual meeting, which was held in Dallas on March 13-16.

The team consisted of graduate student Omar Conte and undergraduate students Hayley Moore, Matt Nanak and Morgan Race, who is also an Honors College student. Richard Coffman, assistant professor of civil engineering and Honors College faculty member, served as their faculty adviser. The team was one of sixteen teams selected to participate in the competition based on a design report submitted before the competition.

During the contest, the student created an 18 inch by 22 inch by 26 inch model of a mechanically stabilized earth retaining wall. Full scale retaining walls are commonly used to create vertical wall faces to hold back soil in civil engineering infrastructure. For their model, the students used a three faced plywood box, which they filled with sand during the contest. The fourth face of the box was made of poster board and the students used strips of craft paper to anchor the poster board facing against the sand.

After the students designed and built their model, it was subjected to 50 pounds of surcharge load from above and 25 pounds of lateral load from one side. Based on their design report and the performance of their wall, which was one of 10 walls that didn’t collapse, the University of Arkansas team was awarded third place.

“The University of Arkansas Geo-challenge team was very successful in their first national competition,” said Coffman. “I am very proud of the team for competing against, and defeating, teams from top tier institutions. Finishing third behind two well renowned technical schools (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo) speaks to their accomplishment.”