Week 9 - Bridge Process

Last week during lab, I was terribly ill and had to go home to the doctors but my teammates filled me in on what I missed. I know one major focus of last lab was to fix the bridge designer. During the week leading up to lab, I did the bridge design modeling of our own bridge for the entire team. The bridge designer program gave me many problems. It would not calculate the loads experienced by the beams in the bridge. After experimenting with it on my own for over an hour, I realized that the program did would not calculate the forces with the x styled center supports. If I took these supports out the bridge would just be a series of squares and in no way replicate the forces in our bridge. I did a few calculations on my own and submitted the image with an error. I know in class that DJ worked with Kelsey and concluded the same thing I did. Kelsey and Chelsea then created a new design with no X supports and modeled that on the bridge designer. This design will be altered again before next lab.

              

          This course reinforced many things I already knew about bridge construction and taught me a few new things as well.  Designing a bridge is not as easy as it seems weather it is out of paper, Knex or steel.  There are so many factors that go into constructing a good, safe and efficient bridge that are easy to overlook.  The easiest thing to overlook is cost. Bridge designers want their bridge to be safe, aesthetically pleasing, functional, practical, safe and memorable (designers want their bridge to stand out from the other, ex: The Golden Gate Bridge).  With all these objectives it is east to get carried away with creative designs.  Before you know it your bridge costs over a million dollars. Learning how to keep cost low, was by far the biggest challenge and learning experience I had in this course. This course was a great learning experience and enhanced many things I already knew about bridges. J