Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Bridge Process


Throughout this term I have learned a lot about bridge design. When I first started WPBD I learned that there are many different ways that a bridge can be build. There are many types of measurements that go into bridge building as Ill. With this I first noticed the tension and compression forces and worked with WPBD so that the forces would not prevent us from having a functioning bridge.
When I started using Knex I became aware of the real building restraints that come with building a bridge. There are only so many ways that the chords can be arranged with the gusset plates. Not all the angles that I wanted to work would work and so I had to adjust accordingly, changing up the size of the chords and where they were placed.
I would have to say that I learned the most from the calculations we did to analyze the forces upon each of the chords that made up the bridge. With the knowledge of these forces it was easier to build the bridge. Since we knew which chords had no force acting upon then we knew that we could remove them. This knowledge helped my group to improve our final bridge design.

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