Process Observations-Durkin

WPBD is an educational engineering program that can teach a student a lot about bridges but falls short in a number of areas when it comes to real world bridge design.  For example the program does not consider secondary members, three-dimensional stability of the bridge, or the many types of member failure. WPBD also does not consider how the bridge will hold up under environmental stresses or how it will effect its surrounding environment. This is important because the ground that the bridge is built on needs to be strong enough to support that bridge and the bridge need to be strong enough to with stand erosion that the ground and water will be under it. WPBD also does not take into consideration how the bridge would fair in the case of a natural disaster.  Leaving out these environmental factors makes it important to see WPBD as an educational program alone. The program also only takes things like cost and some measures of stability into consideration leaving out aesthetics and the amount that the bridge bends as criterion. WPBD also falls short when it comes to the type and distribution of weight that it considers when it comes to traffic. It only considers two types of traffic and traffic in only one direction when testing the bridge.  Also during testing the lateral position of the weight of traffic on the bridge is not considered. The program also does not use the exact cost of materials or consider the cost of labor to build the bridge as these can change with the economy and other factors.

~Jacquelyn Durkin