UT alumni and students at the SAMPE conference. From left to right: Brenin Bales, Cade Walker, Roo Walker, James Brackett, Kaustubh Mungale, Sanjita Wasti, Vinit Chaudhary, Benjamin Schwartz, William Henken, Jayshree Bagad, Pritesh Yeole, and Hannah Maeser.
UT’s Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering (SAMPE) student chapter represented the university well at the SAMPE 2022 Conference and Exhibition held in Charlotte, North Carolina, this May.
This year’s conference was the first to be held in person since 2019, which UT’s student chapter also attended. CEE students were among the UT SAMPE representatives who attended the conference, including PhD candidate Hannah Maeser, who presented a research paper.
As part of the conference, the student chapter entered the student bridge competition, which challenges student chapters from different universities to design and manufacture 2-foot model beams for one of eight material categories, including carbon fiber, glass fiber, and other composite materials. Each category has different requirements for design, material type, and design load (lbf) that the bridge must meet in a three-point bend configuration. Bridges are weighed and tested in the exhibit hall at the conference. Bridges that meet the design load are then ranked by lightest to heaviest within their respective category to determine the winner. Each bridge submission also requires a poster detailing the design, analysis, and manufacturing of the beam. All posters regardless of category are then judged in a separate overall poster competition. Results of the bridge testing by category and overall poster competition are then used to determine which student chapters are the overall winners of the student bridge competition. UT’s SAMPE student chapter entered bridges in three of the material categories: glass box beam, natural fiber beam, and sandwich beam.
Overall Student Bridge Competition Results:
- Glass Box Beam: first place with a design load of 5,600 lbf
- Natural Fiber Beam: third place with a design load of 2,400 lbf
- Sandwich Beam: finished in fifth place after an early failure with design load of 1,600 lbf
- Glass Box Beam poster placed first overall in the bridge poster competition
- UT placed third overall in the bridge competition out of the 15+ schools entered
The conference was a resounding success for UT SAMPE and demonstrated the knowledge base and capabilities of the university in the composites field. Read more about the conference on the college website.
Interested students can learn more about the national SAMPE organization at www.sampeamerica.org or connect with the UT SAMPE student chapter by emailing sampeutk@utk.edu.