Week 8

This week in class we discussed the forces that we calculated over the week and what they meant. We learned and understood the fact that for each gusset plate, the more chords are attached, the more force can be applied before the chord slips from the gusset plate. Then we received the constraints for our final bridge. The bridge had to be 3 feet long and be hollow long ways on the inside by the dimensions 3 inches by 2 inches. This made the actual designing of the bridge a little bit more difficult since we could not actually have chords cutting across the middle of the bridge. In class we made a bridge that only held 17 pounds. Through out the week the bridge has been modified and will hopefully be able to hold more weight.