Learned-Durkin

          During this process I learned about the many aspects of analysis necessary to build an efficient bridge.  I also learned about the many limitations of various bridge design programs and analysis procedures, such as West Point Bridge Design and Methods of Joints Analysis. During this class I was informed of the many different failures of bridges in the past and the differences between a graceful and a disastrous failure.  As a class and as individuals we gained the knowledge of the causes of these failure, the points of compression and tension where the bridge was weakest.  We gained the skills to do at least a basic analysis of the tension and compression forces on the members of our own individual bridges. This analysis as well as looking at a past test of K’NEX joints taught us quite a bit about what makes a K’NEX bridge more stable and what is just not a practical design.

            During last weeks class my group decided to completely redesign our bridge. We found that although our bridge worked fairly well at a span of two feet it was not a reasonable design at three feet. Due to the information shown online about the weight that can be held versus the number of member per joint we also decided to change the types of joints we used.  Our final decision was to make the bridge taller as we felt that this might help compromise the increased span.  Since then we have tested our new bridge and found it to be a much more efficient bridge.  The new bridge is much more expensive than our previous bridge however the increased carrying capacity makes it worth it. We plan to test our bridge again during the next class period as hopefully it will prove to be more efficient.