The “R&F Cup” 12^th National Structural Design Competition for College Students is being held at South China University of Technology in Guangzhou from November 7 to 11, 2018. More than 106 delegations from 105 colleges and universities of various provinces, cities and autonomous regions across China and two specially invited university delegations from Hong Kong participated in the Competition. The delegation of Chongqing University has won the “special award” with the highest total score. Chongqing University has also won the “outstanding organization award” as the secretary organization of Chongqing Structural Design Competition for College Students.

The National Structural Design Competition for College Students is one of the nine disciplinary competitions for college students of China as recognized by the Ministry of Education. It is designed to improve the innovative design capacity, practical ability and comprehensive quality of college students and enhance exchange and cooperation between different colleges and universities, and is dubbed as a “brightest pearl on the crown of civil engineering discipline competition” for college students. The Competition is held on two levels. To be specific, the provinces, cities and autonomous regions will organize zone competitions to select outstanding teams to participate in the national competition. In 2018, 106 delegations from 105 colleges and universities have been selected out of 1,236 delegations from 542 colleges and universities in the zone competitions held throughout China to participate in the national competition.

In this year’s competition, the delegations were required to design and fabricate a large-span spatial structure model. The allowable arrangement space for the model components was the space between two semi-spherical surfaces. Eight loading points were set up to exert vertical load and horizontal load. The participating students were required to carry out force analysis and model fabrication and test of the spatial structure under different load cases such as static load, randomly positioned load and moving load.

Chongqing University held the 16^th Structural Design Competition in May 2018 and selected 6 teams. The 6 teams went through training of 2 months and eventually 3 teams were selected and participated in the zone competition held in Chongqing in the middle of July. These 3 teams were the First Delegation (Guo Zhaokun, Deng Rujie, and Zhang Hui) and the Second Delegation (Wang Chenchen, Peng Haifeng and Zhou Zhenda) of Chongqing University from the School of Civil Engineering, and the Third Delegation of Chongqing University from the School of Architecture and Urban Planning (Shen Yifei, Liang Qiaoyang and Chen Zhi) respectively. In the zone competition, the three delegations respectively won the special award, first award and second award. The three delegations went through intensified training of 3 months and the First Delegation was finally selected as the Chongqing University Delegation to participate in the 12^th National Structural Design Competition for College Students.

In the national competition, the weight of model built up by CQU delegation is 78.2g, which was among the lightest together with the model built by Shanghai Jiaotong University delegation. The students remained calm in the competition against tremendous pressure, and did very well in the representation and defense part. The delegation eventually achieved the full-score loading of 76.5kg of 3 levels, and obtained the highest total score.

In the training of 5 months, Supervisors Nie Shidong, Guo Ying and Li Peng offered patient guide and contributed greatly to the success of the delegation.

This year’s competition is a featured grand event with substantial influence and achievements. It was sponsored by the Specialized Committee on Engineering Education of Higher Education Academy of China, the Specialized Steering Committee on Civil Engineering Discipline of Colleges and Universities, the Education Work Committee of China Civil Engineering Society, and the Environment, Civil Engineering and Water Conservancy Faculty of Science and Technology Committee, the Ministry of Education and organized by South China University of Technology, with Guangzhou R&F Real Estate Co., Ltd. as the title sponsor. In 2019, the 13^th National Structural Design Competition for College Students will be held by Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology located in Xi’an.