From October 18-22, the 11th Structure Design Contest for College Students was held atWuhanUniversity. A total of 108 teams including the team fromTsinghuaUniversitycompeted for the prizes. The team from NEFU won first national prize (ranked ninth) and outstanding organization award, which was a historic breakthrough and honored the Party’s 19th National Congress with outstanding achievements.

The Structure Design Contest for College Students is known as the “Olympic Competition” of civil engineering disciplines, which in order to test the innovative spirit, team awareness, and time control ability of civil engineering major students. This contest attracted 1182 teams from 506 universities in the whole country. After the competitions in different provinces (cities) and districts, altogether 108 teams including teams fromNortheastForestryUniversity,TsinghuaUniversity,ShanghaiJiaoTongUniversity, and Harbin Institute of Technology won qualification for the national finals.

In view of the shortage of water resources and the unequal distribution of water resources in China, the contest question “Design and Manufacture of Aqueduct Supporting System” was set in the national finals. Through the aqueduct support system structural model and the water loading test, the stress characteristics of aqueduct support system structure, the design optimization, the construction technology and other issues are studied. After 18 hours of on-site production of the model and carrying out water loading test, NEFU students excelled at model quality, model strength and water delivery efficiency, winning the first national prize (ranked ninth).

The Structure Design Contest for College Students is one of nine subject competitions approved by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance. It is co-sponsored by the Engineering Education Committee of China Association of Higher Education, the Professional Steering Committee of Civil Engineering of Colleges and Universities, the China Civil Engineering Society Education Committee, and the Ministry of Education Science and Technology Commission. So far, ten sessions have been held.