Staquet Weekly Blog - Week 4

Last week, as a group, we worked on the computer with the West Point Bridge Design program to try and make our bridges from last week more cost effective.  We ended up designing a whole new bridge, keeping in mind the fact that with less weight and material comes a cheaper bridge.  As a team we were able to design a bridge that costed less than any of our previously designed bridges and I think this is due to the fact that we were able to put all of our thoughts together to accomplish the task.  In the coming week we plan to learn more about bridge design to see what combinations to work better than others so we can design a really good bridge for the K'Nex competition.  We will also learn from the questions being answers by the research librarian.  I believe that West Point Bridge Designer is a great demonstration of the bridge design phase in a real life situation.  There are all types of bridges to choose from and after that it is all up to the designer.  It gives you the ability to change a lot parameters right from the start including bridge span, anchor points, number of piers, road deck material, and even how many lanes wide it will be.  It gives you the opportunity to see what the relative cost of that type of bridge would be and can be very insightful as to what is safe and what is not.  While all of these aspects are great, the program does leave out a lot of crucial pieces to building an actual bridge like the ground type, dynamic side loads like wind, and even what type of environment the bridge will be standing in (corrosive, salt ridden air for example).  It also does not give you an estimate for the actual construction cost of building the designed bridge.  Although it is not the perfect program it is extremely useful for students in an entry level bridge design course, and it gave me the chance to learn a lot about truss bridges and their core design.