Introduction
For this porject specifically, we used only one software to complete it, the Brdge desigenr 2016, in which we done all our designs on this softare, below is a screenshot of their download website. The software is very powerful in terms of its designing abilities as well as well its comprehensive calculation functionalities.
Initial DeisgnOur initial design was a suspension bridge as shown on the picture on the right. The main advantage of this bridge is that it's very aesthetically pleasing and its ability to support a great amount of weight. However, the suspension bridge is way to costly to be implemented as it had a budget of near 3/4 million dollars. Due to the large amount of structure members required, the price is just too high to be acceptable for our team's goal, and thus we had to come up with a new design.
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Second Design
This image shows Load test results our final design, showing the force that each individual memebers on bridge exerts, which is crucial in guiding us in `revising the slenderness of the members, in order to add stronger support on members that will be exerting lots of compression or tentions and reduce materials on memebers that exerts less force, thus reducing the cost and weight.
Additional Engineering Notebook Documentations
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ConclusionFrom this project, we learned how to effectively reduce the cost by eliminating unnecessary materials or parts and use those saved materials on more important areas that are experiencing a greater force. How to quickly trial and error is also an intersting thing that we learned from the project. Through this project, we also gained a greater insight on the compression and tension force on the truss as well as tensile strengths, etc that we explored througout the second part of the course, and seeing them all working together in a real-world simulation deepened our understandings.
When to save materials and when not to save materials is an important lesson from the project. |