Week 6

This week in class we tested our bridges. To do this we placed a board with a bucket under on our bridge and added sand into the bucket until the bridge collapsed. We tested our bridge twice. The first time the bridge bent so much that one of the connecters slid out and the bridge fell in one piece. The second time the bridge bent until it snapped. This snap did not happen in the middle it occurred closer to one of the sides. The bridge did not hold as much as we thought it would. The first time the bridge held approximately 17 pounds of sand and the second time the bridge held approximately 11 pounds of sand. The failure of the bridge also did not occur as we thought it would. We had believed that the bridge would snap down the middle when it failed. It did not do this either time. We are curious as to why the failure occurred the way it did. One thing that we learned in this class is that it is better to not used the grooved gusset plates because they have a higher tendency to slip apart.