NEWS Engineers win national competition PAGE 2
MARCH 3, 2014
THE DAILY TITAN
Victory in ‘GeoWall’ contest is first in school history MATTHEW MEDINA Daily Titan
A team of civil engineers from Cal State Fullerton outperformed 15 other schools in a national competition to build the best retaining wall in the 2014 Geo-Congress in Atlanta last week. As part of the conference, student teams participated in contests such as the GeoWall competition. The object was to build a wall that would hold as much as possible while withstanding conditions that simulate real life occurrences, such as seismic forces. John Thurlo, a civil engineering major and the president of CalGeo, led the four-student team, which also included Matthew Farrington, Daniel Judge and John Stapleton.
MONDAY
CSUF arguably came into the GeoWall event as the favorite, because conference judges ranked the team’s design concept for the wall to be No. 1. “We felt very confident going into it,” Thurlo said. “Maybe more confident than we should have been.” CSUF students had never built the best GeoWall before this year’s competition. In the design concept contest prior to the GeoCongress, CSUF had a firstplace finish in 2011, with second-place and thirdplace awards following in 2012 and 2013 respectively. Before Monday, CSUF’s previous best finish in the retaining wall competition was 10th place. Cal Poly Pomona took second place, and the team from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute finished in third. The GeoWall competitors wanted to make the wall retain as much soil as possible while the wall is subjected to tests such as having a five-pound weight dropped
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onto it, which simulates a seismic load. Binod Tiwari, Ph.D., an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and adviser to the CSUF student team, accompanied the students to Atlanta. “These guys made us proud,” Tiwari said of his students. Tiwari said the other teams were worried that they had to use more materials to keep their walls stable. By limiting the weight of their wall to about 4.7 grams, the CSUF team got a higher score from the judges. “Weight is the biggest component of the score,” Thurlo said. “And if you have over 13 grams of reinforcement, you actually get a negative number … Before we left, I was worried other schools were going to be lighter than us, but when we got there, everybody was way more than us.” Their final score was 169.2 out of a maximum of about 200; Cal Poly Pomona, the runner-up, had a score of 143. “It definitely helped that we were a lot lighter than the other teams, and a lot of them were very surprised that we were able to do that,” Thurlo said. Students also participated in other competitions Monday. The GeoPoster event invited students to present their research in a poster session, and the top six competitors are awarded a grant to further pursue their research. Sneda Upadhyaya, a graduate student studying civil engineering, competed in the 2013 and 2014 GeoPoster sessions, but did not finish in the top six. During the Geo-Congress, which took place from Feb. 23 to last Thursday, attendees also had the chance to attend workshops and
Courtesy of Binod Tiwari Cal State Fullerton team members hold their first-place trophy after winning the GeoWall competition during the 2014 Geo-Conference. Judges ranked the CSUF retaining wall as the best.
network with colleagues and professionals already in the field. Tiwari hosted a workshop titled “Involving Students in Geotechnical Research from Their Early Career.” “We get to meet people and basically fill out our network, but also you look at all those professionals presenting … and you also get to learn presentation skills,” Upadhyaya said. The conference also offered some less stressful events for students, such as a ping-pong tournament. “We were there for hours
playing ping-pong. We got third place in the ping-pong tournament,” Thurlo said. “It’s nothing compared to first in the nation (in the GeoWall competition).” For Wednesday, the final day of the conference, “Meet the Author” poster sessions gave attendees an opportunity to meet with professionals from across the United States who presented their own research. Thurlo said he appreciated the opportunity to meet with a researcher from the Los Angeles Department of Public Works and have
a one-on-one conversation with him that lasted roughly 10 minutes. “I found it very interesting because it was presented by a guy who I probably have met from an area where I have been,” he said. Thurlo said he hopes to return to the Geo-Congress in 2015 as a graduate student with CSUF after he graduates this year with a degree in civil engineering. As for the GeoWall competition, CSUF will have to relinquish the trophy if its team does not win again next year.
Bonnie Stewart editorinchief@dailytitan.com news@dailytitan.com
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MARIAH CARRILLO / Daily Titan Students share an umbrella while walking across campus Thursday. The heavy rain that occurred throughout Southern California caused an ROTC exercise involving Black Hawk helicopters to be delayed until April 18.
Rain delays helicopter training Wet weather forces ROTC to push back special exercises MIA MCCORMICK Daily Titan
Heavy rain on Friday kept two Black Hawk helicopters that were set to be used in Cal State Fullerton
ROTC exercises out of the air. The ROTC Titan Battalion officers waited anxiously for arrival confirmation of the Black Hawk helicopters that were set to land at the CSUF intramural field at approximately 10 a.m. The helicopters were delayed due to unsafe weather conditions. Word from
the pilots did not come until 11:30 a.m., when the battalion received confirmation that they would in fact not be making the trip to CSUF. A special instructional field training exercise for contracted ROTC cadets was planned to take place upon the Black Hawks’ arrival. The training has been postponed to April 18.
Dean Shari McMahan, Ph.D., will attend the rescheduled training, representing the College of Health and Human Development. Associate Dean Stephen Walk, Ph.D., Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Jose Cruz, Ph.D., and CSUF alumnus First Lt. Nathan Hong, a pilot, will also attend.
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