Goals for my bridge design:
- Truss design consist mostly of triangles
- Have a general square shape for the bridge
- Have a two lane truss bridge that did not include pillars
- Keep the cost down
- Use as few members as possible and still be considered steady
View of bridge in building mode
Image of truck in center of bridge
Load Test Results
My design originally changed from when I started the design
process. I am still getting used to WPBD
the program, so a lot of things I did were experimental. I started out thinking that a lot of small
triangles would be best, but I soon realized that it was also more
expensive. I basically tried to come up
with the cheapest bridge I could that supported the truck. I learned that members couldn’t be too thin
and I had to find a happy medium in the length of each member. Overall, I am happy with the design since it
is my first time designing a bridge.
The cost estimate turned out to be $438,282.34. I played around with a few other designs and
out of the three bridges I saved, this one was the cheapest. I hope to eventually decrease this to under
$400,000 but I feel this will take practice and patience.
Overall, I learned how to use WPBD and how to build a
beginner bridge. I found the load test
results to be very useful and the truck simulator to really help me understand
why my bridge was failing at certain points.
In the future I hope to build upon my knowledge so I can improve my
bridge building skills and create more efficient and stronger designs.
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