Official Website http://cfscompetition.unt.edu
The 2013 Student Competition on Cold-Formed Steel Design received a total of 55 entries from 8 universities listed below.
The judging panel carefully reviewed all entries and ranked them according to the design's efficiency and constructability as well as the quality of the essay.
The top 3 winners are the following.
Rank |
Student's Name |
School |
Cross-Section Shape |
Cross-Section Area |
1st |
Junle Cai |
Virginia Tech, USA |
|
0.853 in^2 |
2nd |
Colin Van Niejenhuis |
University of Waterloo, Canada |
|
0.857 in^2 |
3rd |
Yu Gao |
Virginia Tech, USA |
|
0.879 in^2 |
The other top 10 students are:
4 | Jianli Chen | Virginia Tech, USA |
5 | Yinglei Li | Tongji University, China |
6 | Ashlin Day | University of North Texas |
7 | Sepehr Shojaeiaboalvardi | University of Western Ontario, Canada |
8 | Joseph Stoner | University of Waterloo, Canada |
9 | Jingyao Li | Virginia Tech, USA |
10 | Lucas Cotterell | Virginia Tech, US |
The top 3 students will received individual cash award in amount of $700, $350, $200
respectively.
The top 3 students will receive individual award plaque by mail.
All top 10 students will received a one-year CFSEI student membership ( www.cfsei.org ).
We sincerely appreciate the supports and advices from the sponsors and many individuals. We look forward to holding the competition again in 2014. If you have any ideas, suggestions, or comments for this event, please send us emails at CFS_Competition@unt.edu or use the mailing address listed at the bottom of this page.
Official Website http://cfscompetition.unt.edu
April 3, 2013
The mission of the International Student Competition on Cold-Formed Steel Design (CFS Design Student Competition) is to promote higher education in cold-formed steel structural design and to encourage students to use creative thinking skills to solve engineering problems.
After the successful 2012 and 2011 competition, the 2013 Competition is hosted again at the University of North Teas. We encourage the participation of any students at any level in any major as long as you are creative, interested in designing things, and eager to learn new technologies.
The 2013 CFS Design Competition is open to all full-time students at any level. All student entrants are required to work on the problem individually, and no team solutions are accepted.
Dr. Cheng Yu, Associate Professor, University of North Texas.
The winning designs will be recognized and exhibited at appropriate platforms such as professional conferences, websites and news letters.
Task
To design an open section shape for an 8-inch (304.8-mm) deep, 25-ft (7.62-m) long
flexural member which provides an adequate nominal bending strength and utilizes the
least possible material.
Figure 1
Requirements
1. The section shall have at least one bottom flange and one top flange with a minimum 1.5-inch (38.1-mm) width to accommodate screw-fastened sheathing attachments. The flanges shall be parallel to the X-X axis as illustrated in Figure 1.
2. The cross-section shall be an open shape. Sharp corners (zero radius) can be assumed.
3. The distance between the center lines of the top and bottom flanges shall be 8 inches (203.2 mm).
4. The section should provide a minimum 100 kip-in. (11.30 kN-m) nominal flexural strength against positive bending (top flange in compression). The section should also have a minimum 12 in.^4 moment of inertia of the gross section about the X-X axis (horizontal axis passing centroid).
5. The member shall have uniform thickness, and the steel properties are defined as:
Elastic modulus E=29500 ksi (203.4 GPa), Possion's ratio v=0.3, materials yield stress
Fy=50 ksi (344.7 MPa). The steel thickness shall be picked from the Table 1.
Table 1
Allowable Steel Thickness |
0.0188 in. (0.4775 mm) |
0.0283 in. (0.7188 mm) |
0.0312 in. (0.7925 mm) |
0.0346 in. (0.8788 mm) |
0.0451 in. (1.1455 mm) |
0.0566 in. (1.4376 mm) |
0.0713 in. (1.8110 mm) |
0.1017 in. (2.5832 mm) |
0.1242 in. (3.1547 mm) |
7. The Direct Strength Method is recommended for calculating the nominal flexural strength (AISI S100 Appendix 1).
Tool
Use an open source software CUFSM to perform the elastic buckling analysis to determine the critical elastic buckling loads. CUFSM 3.12 can be downloaded here. More information about the software can be found in this link.
The Direct Strength Method provisions can be found in the Appendix 1 of the AISI S100-07 North American Specification for Cold-Formed Steel Structural Members. AISI permits the students to download the AISI S100-07 Appendix 1 for use in this competition only, link.
A detailed design example is provided here, the Direct Strength Method procedure can be found in this document.
The design package (zipped in one file) must be submitted via email to CFS_Competition@unt.edu by 6:00pm on September 15, 2013, at student' local time.
The design package shall include three documents:
The design package (3 documents) shall be zipped to one single .zip or .rar file, and then emailed to the above address. The name of the single file shall be in the format: first name_last name.zip or first name_last name.rar.
A brief essay (in English), limited to maximum 5 letter-size pages, is required as part of the design package. The essay shall describe the concept of the design, the methodology used for optimization, and the detailed calculation of the nominal flexural strength.
1. The CUFSM only takes two decimals for coordinate inputs but my design has many small elements which need at least four decimals for the node coordinates.
Solution: Use '1/100 inch' as the length unit so that you can adopt more decimals for the coordinates.
Cold-formed steel - Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_formed_steel
CCFSS Cold-Formed Steel for Students. http://www.ccfssonline.org/Student/Student.html
Additional questions on the competition subject, CUFSM software, and submissions should be addressed to:
Cheng Yu, Associate Professor
University of North Texas
3940 E. Elm St., Suite F115
Denton, TX 76207
Tel: 940.565.2022
Fax: 940.565.2666
e-mail: Cheng.Yu@unt.edu
The Competition organizer would like to thank the Sponsors for their financial supports. The Competition is partially funded by the National Science Foundation through a CAREER award (NSF CMMI #0955189). The momentary awards for 2013 Competition are provided by the American Iron and Steel Institute. The one-year CFSEI student memberships for the top 10 students are provided by the Cold-Formed Steel Engineers Institute. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Competition do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsors.
The 2013 competition problem was designed by the Judging Panel, their technical advises to this event is greatly appreciated. Special thanks go to Dr. Ben Schafer at the Johns Hopkins University who provided the CUFSM software for this event.
The Competition could not be successful without the promotion and support by the following organizations: