Week 4: WPBD

West point bridge design program is an excellent novel program that aids in bridge designing. It helps the student understand the physics behind a bridge and the constraints that go behind building one. gravity, fluctuating weight distribution, how the weight of the bridge itself comes into affect. WPBD gives you a plethera of options on what to build the bridge with but the our assignment was to build the most cost effective bridge. The group as a whole was forced to brainstorm and methodically weigh our options, according to the constraints of building the bridge and out budget.
WPBD does not accurately portray the full range of affects on a bridge, while a bridge may last in WPBD, it is not necessary that it will last at all in reality, yes, WPBD does take into some of the natural affects on a bridge but it cannot accurately portray all of them. A real civil engineer would need to do countlessly more calculations.

Last week in class we compared the groups individual designs, and created one design that we thought worked best and was the most cost effective design. What, we learned is that for bridge to work, it doesn't have to be complex, but rather simple. Smaller rods with a  solid steel rod outer and a hollow rod inner works alot better than a full solid steel rod bridge, it also costs alot less. We all came together with what we knew individually and created a bridge we thought was best of all worlds. This week we will start to build our bridge that we designed with KNEX..

Week 4: WPBD

For the past couple of weeks, our group was assigned to brainstorm with an idea of a serviceable bridge that also satisfies a set of constraints. To test out our individual idea, our group was introduced to West Point Bridge Design software. This was great software that helped us understand gravity behind designing a bridge. The West Point Bridge Design software was a very helpful tool in terms of visualizing the structural behavior and mechanism involved in the designing process. One of the realistic features in the West Point Bridge designer is that it calculates the cost of the bridge as it gets built. The cost consists of four components such as materials cost, connection cost, product cost, and site cost. The software helps us discover the most economical methods to design a bridge. One of the methods is to use hollow tubes for compression members and solid bars for tension members.

Along with constructing a bridge, the software provides an exaggerated animation of the constructed bridge. After the animation the software would also provide a feedback on what worked well and which members in the bridge failed to satisfy the task. The West Point Bridge Designer was realistic and helpful in understanding the factors that impact a bridge design in an ideal world. To build a real bridge design there needs to be more factors that needs to be addressed such as the location of the bridge, snow, labor cost, wind, and other loads that will impact the bridge design. Another major priority of a serviceable should be to with stand certain natural disasters such as earthquakes, and floods. Overall, the software was a great foundation for understanding the basic concepts that is involved in constructing a serviceable bridge.

During the previous week in class, we compared and analyzed different bridges that designed by other groups. This was a great way to understand different techniques and mechanism that can be applied in enhancing our bridge design. We also learned a great lesson about not getting too fancy with the bridges cause the objective is to design a serviceable bridge with the minimum cost. After the class discussion, our group was able to combine all the individual bridge designs into a single a design with a cost range of 230,000 dollars. During the process we learned the advantages in shortening the size of the solid bars and replacing the solid bars with hollow tubes. For next week, we will be introduced to the KNEXs and perform truss analysis. 

Week 4: WPBD

West Point Bridge Design is very excellent and useful software for engineers to understand how professionals design real structures. It is a tool that helps visualize structural behavior and also opportunity to experience the design process.  It also holds the purpose to demonstrate how engineers use computers as a tool for efficiency in their line of work. However, significant numbers of changes have been made to the software rather than the completely real life experience because they wanted it to prevent the program from being too complex. It serves to mainly demonstrate the design process and disregard the technical details of structures. Real engineers need to take many other factors under consideration for bridge efficiency and cost, such as abutments, piers, deck, all connections, concrete, framing, secondary membrane, and labor. Also the efficiency of the bridge is not tested correctly because many of the different loads are not taken under consideration, such as vehicles, self-weight, wind, snow, earthquakes, longitudinal and lateral position, and human errors. Another important issue that is missing in West Point Bridge Design is the concept of aesthetics, which is the individuals view on how a design looks good. Overall, it is a very helpful tool, but does not accurately reflect on how civil engineers really design a bridge.  Many of the West Point designs survive in the software but cannot last in the real world because it doesn’t meet the real physical requirements and effectiveness required for the project.

 Last week in class we compared bridge designs submitted by students and tried to understand what technics are the best approach. We also took a look at the design with the least estimated cost and realized that a simple design is enough, it does not have to be complex. For rest of the class we worked in groups to create the least costing bridge that is effective enough to get the truck across. Together we tried many different technics, such as material type, size, solid or hollow, etc. for the first time in the course we actually worked as one and put our thought together. For this week, I anticipate that we will finish up with learning how to create a good bridge design so that we can move on to using KNEXs. The course schedule shows that we will learn and start using KNEXs pieces to build a real bridge.