week 8 blog post Jordan Banyas

Through our bridge designing process, we learned that the way to add strength to your bridge is to add height to it. This helps disperse the vertical forces more effectively. This week we re-designed our bridge's truss system as well as adding a new top layer. Our final design includes 369 pieces and costs 520,000 dollars. we hope it will hold around 45-50 pounds.

What I learned

Throughout the term, each of our individual designs changed quite significantly.  The main reason for our changes was because of failure from testing.  I believe that the testing portion of the design process is the most important step for it gives us the most information.  Some of the information given are failure points, durability, a transfer of forces.  With this data, our group was able to formulate a very effective truss.  Some specific design hints were that the design should have a large height in order to evenly distribute the force across more member.  This was derives through many tests.  Testing yields very helpful knowledge.

Greenwood - Week 8

At this point we have discovered force in truss members using the Joint Method form of analysis.  It was an easy enough approach to the problem of force in long members on real bridges, and I believe it can be applied into real applications.  For example our Knex bridge can and should be analyzed mathematically before we attempt to apply any extraneous weight to it.  Actual engineers use math as a tool everyday to make sure their ideas can come to life, and we are no different.  Safety, usefulness, and financial awareness are all issues which can be addressed using simple math and physics.  If a bridge breaks due to a problem that could have been foreseen using a pencil and paper, there is no excuse for this laziness.
Down the line I believe I would like to analyze some of the factors which contribute to the swaying of the bridges we have seen in lab.  It obviously is an issue with the joints of the trusses, but there must be a way to look at these problems on paper before we apply them in lab.  It seems that Knex joints are not very strong, but that should not matter with a proper design.  This week and next week our group will be working hard to look at our bridge very closely to analyze any problem we may foresee.

Week 8- Jordan Banyas

For the project we are doing in this class, the truss analysis information is very helpful. The truss analysis we were taught deal with static forces which is similar to what our goal is in the bridge building competition. However, for a real bridge these calculations would not be very helpful because the forces would be dynamic as opposed to static. We would have to learn a whole new method of calculations to keep up with the force enacted by a moving vehicle. At this point in the term I believe we have learned all that we need to be successful in this project. Now it just becomes a matter of putting all of our knowledge into action. This week we tinkered with out bridge a little bit more and believe we finally have a successful idea. We will further execute this idea throughout the week so we are ready for the final competition in week nine.

A3-Jordan Banyas

After doing the calculations for a bridge with a height of 6 inches, length of 24 inches, with a weight of ten pounds imposed on it. The calculations are shown in the picture below. This applies to our project in that the sides of our bridge are very similar to the bridge we calculated. Although we have not figured out the exact dimensions of it yet, we can now accurately calculate what dimensions will give us the best results.

Week 7- Carr

Last week in lab we tested one of our bridge designs and it performed fine yet we are striving for something more.  We, as a group, would love to see our bridge shatter the previous weight test.  Because of this, we went back to the drawing board and designed a new type of truss.  We fell confident about how it will perform and can't wait to test it.  Some data would be extremely helpful in our design process.  The forces exerted on each member or plate would greatly aid us in determining how to better disperse forces.  If we were to take this in our own hands we would change the weight into newtons and break up the forces into different directions.  We would use sine and cosine  to find the partial forces in different directions and mathematically design a strong truss.

Jordan Banyas week 7 post

This week we reconstructed our bridge based on the results of last week's weigh in. Our bridge held a disheartening 17.4 pounds of compression on our bridge, however we are confident we can fix the problems. Learning about how to calculate the force exerted on our outer trusses would be very useful information. Right now, based on our knowledge of the summation of forces and that each angle is at a forty-five degree angle, we can have a basic understanding as to how the forces are dispersed. By taking the cosine or sine of fourty-five and setting it equal to the amount of weight exerted on the bridge, we can successfully calculate how much force each member we will hold. The only question is how much force will it take to break our design?

kevin carr week 6

This week we worked on our Kinex bridge.  We have a strong design but fell short on pieces.  We will continue to build and improve our bridge design. We will test it today in class and improve our weak points.

Jordan banyas week 6

This week we think we have a very promising bridge design. We dropped our old idea and added cross sections to the top of our bridge to stop it from swaying when force is acted upon it. We look forward to testing the new bridge this week. This weeks goals will consist of finding our bridges less attractive points and polishing them up before we test it again.

Week 6-Greenwood

After using Knex over the past week designing and redesigning our bridge, my views have only slightly changed.  The main difference between my post last week and now is that I know that WPBD and Knex are two entirely different tools.  Since Knex requires us to think in 3D, WPBD really is only the first, most basic step in building a bridge.  

When building an actual bridge made of steel instead of Knex, there would be no loose "joints" where the Knex is having issues staying in a rut.  On a real bridge, the connectors are finals.  This just means that Knex allows the group to more accurately create a working bridge model, as opposed to just putting together something that is large, expensive, and ugly.  Hopefully our team can complete this task in the coming weeks, as the module draws to a close.

A2 Greenwood

The goal of this module is to create the most cost effective, useful bridge using Knex which spans a distance of two feet.  In order to accomplish this, many designs and prototypes had to be used.  In this case, we have just began the transition from WPBD to using Knex, and it is very difficult.  First of all, we are very limited by the cost and amount pieces/connectors we have to work with.  To overcome these obstacles, we have worked hard as a team to create designs which will work.  For this A2 design, I have drawn up a simple prototype which I believe could be cheap and strong.

Above is my rough sketches of my design.  Basically, it is a simple truss bridge which elevate to an even high sections of trusses at the top.  I believe this will add stability as well as good support for the weight apparatus.  The only issue now is the price.

Above is the projected price of my bridge.  Although I have not actually put together my idea, I am almost positive this will increase as I find mistakes in my design.

Week 5 Post- Greenwood

For the past five weeks we have been using West Point Bridge Designer as our groups main tool for creating prototype bridges.  Last week, we began using Knex to bring our ideas to life.  At first, using these tiny building pieces posed obstacles in our design process.  For example, it was difficult for us to bring our WPBD design into 3 dimensions.  Also, it was hard to pick which types of connectors and joints to use.  Overall, though, I believe that Knex are a useful tool for learning how to bring ideas to life; whether on a large scale or small.  

Therefore I believe that Knex and WPBD should not be compared, but used together.  This is because they compliment each other's usefulness.  Designing first in the bridge designer and then using Knex should be our process for the next few weeks, and I believe this will be the most efficient way of creating our bridge.

Jordan Banyas Week 5

Transitioning from WPBD to K-NEX is a lot different then I initially thought. The strategy when using WPBD is to keep a moving vehicle supported while it drives across where as the objective of the K-NEX bridge is to have it hold as much dead weight as possible. This week our group has come up with multiple designs we think will be successful. Our goal is to find the weaker areas of each design and improve upon them.

Transition

As we move from one design style to another, many new opportunities arise.  Unlike before, we are now able to be hands on and see each piece's strength's and weaknesses are.  In addition, we can now view our structure in a three dimensional space.  This allows us to make modifications inside and on top of the truss.  However, there are some drawbacks.  The biggest one is that now the revision process after failure is not as simple as WPBD.  The time and effort applied into forming a structure has to be applied over and over again after each failure.  It is tedious and frustration.  Yet, it a sense it is similar to before.  We still use the same geometric to distribute force and we definitely use what we learned from WPBD and apply it to our hands on approach.

A2-Carr

  The way I designed this bridge was quite standard but I believe it will still perform effectively.  It is the shape of a trapezoid to disperse the forces better. I chose to use triangles throughout the bridge to distribute the forces throughout the bridge and not have it deform before failure.  As I was advancing through my design process, I had to make many corrections to make sure that the connections of pieces was possible.  Also, I desired to not make the connections between the frames too detailed as it would add weight and cost.  I had a few drafts but settled with this one.  After this process, I learned that if one has to design a bridge, he or she needs to be patient and consider many factors.  Multiple drafts will only strengthen the outcome

Bill:
3.375" chord: 21- $31,500
5.00" chord: 14- $ 28,000
360 degree gusset plates: 18- $18,000
Total: $77,500

A2-Jordan Banyas

Our assignment for week five was to design our own bridge that can span two feet in length and at least four inches in width using K-NEX pieces. The goal of this design is to create the lowest Cost/Failure-Load ratio of the class. To do this, I tried to use as many triangles as possible in my design as triangles are the strongest geometric shape. along with making triangles, I made the angles under the most pressure forty-five degrees to evenly distribute the weight among the triangle. These were my final design images as well as a spread sheet of my designs total cost($140,500).

 Throughout the process of designing this bridge, I realized that just the acute triangles would not be long enough to cover the two feet span. because of this my design changed to add two right triangles on the end of my initial design. During the process I learned that the angle constraints are very limited when using basic K-NEX. There is not a whole lot of flexibility in the design process due to there only being a limited number of different pieces.