Today was judgment day! For 1.013 Senior Design, one of our major projects is to design a bridge for a third world country in a savannah climate during the flood season. The bridge had to span 10 ft, and the deck had be at least 2 feet above the ground. The failure criteria was that the bridge had to hold 2000lbs of weight, and not deflect more than 1/2 inch.
We decided to use wood since that is a readily available material in the third world, and to do a spin on the classic truss structure. We wanted the design to be visually appealing, so our side trusses formed a V shape. and the planks laid across the top of the bridge.
Our Bridge in SketchUp!
The underneath V of the bridge. So visually appealing!
It was a beautiful day outside, perfect for bridge testing! There were a whole variety of bridges – arches, a roll-up bridge, and other ones I don’t even know how to describe. It was finally our turn to load our bridge, but as the only all-female group all 5’4’’' or shorter, we were struggling a little bit to raise the 50lb blocks up 3ft in the air. Suddenly all these male onlookers swooped in and loaded our bridge in less than a minute. It didn’t fail, and it passed the deflection test by deflecting only 3/8’’! Most groups don’t pass the deflection requirement since its meant for a highway overpass, so we were proud of our design.
Beautiful Day!
Confident in our design to load another few hundred pounds on it.
Yay! Our hard-work on our bridge paid off!
No comments:
Post a Comment