Disel - Week 4 Blog Entry

This week we were able to design a cheaper bridge than the previous ones using West Point Bridge Designer. Even that we made a good job we still couldn't design the cheapest bridge on our lab section. Anyway as a team we realised that the simplest designs are the best ones in reducing cost. We were told that next week we are getting the knex, so we decided to start building the bridge with knex  as soon as we get them.
About the software West Point Bridge Designer there are some things that I don't like about it. For example it is impossible to test the bridge with other factors than weight, such as wind or earthquakes. But in general the software is really useful and helpful. We can design a lot of bridges in a few minutes using different materials  and we can also test is for the weight that can hold.

Skip - Week 4 Blog Entry

This week we used West Point Bridge Designer to design the cheapest bridge that would still support the weight of the truck running over it. We worked as a team and worked on it and was able to make the bridge cheaper than our original design, but we were not able to beat the cheapest bridge in the class. In the coming week, we were told that we would start using Knex to actually make a bridge so my teammates and I agreed to work on actually making an actual bridge using the Knex. We will try to build bridge that will most likely be the base design for our final bridge. We will build off of this bridge and make improvements to make a strong bridge in the end. The major accomplishment this week was that we were able to design a bridge that was about $24,000 bridge that could still hold the weight of the truck running over it. The only issue this week was that we could not beat the group that made a cheaper bridge. Besides that, there were no problems. The group is in good shape working together and discussing things as a group.

I think that West Point Bridge Designer does a good job in making it realistic because first of all, it lets us design things freely. In the real world, we can design freely, and this program allows this. Yet, in all this freedom, there are real world constraints such as the specific span lengths ans support configurations. The cost is also realistic because it corresponds the material used, how big it is, how long it is, how it is shaped, etc. The program also is realistic in simulating the forces on the bridge on its own and when a vehicle runs on top of it. It is not close to the real world in the sense that they disregard some important factors such as wind, possible collisions, and earthquakes. In the real world, they must also regard symmetry but the program does not do this on the vehicular weight test because it only tests if the bridge would be standing if the truck went from the left side and the right side. Over all, I do think that the program is realistic and reliable.

Jonathan- Week 4 Blog Entry

During the week 3 lab session, all three of us were able to collaborate to try and make a superior bridge design. We were able to get a bridge that was able to stand while costing $242,000, which is a huge improvement to our individual concepts. We have decided that we are all going to try other standard templates to try and get a more efficient design going. We don't really have any conflicts yet, as we are still in the brainstorming process as to figuring out which design works best.
I think the West Point Bridge Designer can be used to help find a viable pattern of how you should design your bridge, but it does not include other factors such as wind or other random natural effects. It does however let you choose a specific span length and support configurations to match real world scenarios. It also gives you a pretty standard cost of how much your bridge will be depending on what components you use. Some trade offs to using this program is that it doesn't have any information about the fatigue of the bridge, or how long it will last with its durability. Although it does have options for difference load capacities, there are always many different kinds of combinations that need to be thought out before building the bridge, which this program doesn't have.

Week 2 Blog Post - Disel

 In our first week we were introduced about the course by a powerpoint presentation and we watched for a few minutes 3D examples of different bridges on google earth. We have started working on the bridge design using West Point Bridge Designer and we are trying to have a big number of different designs so we can choose the best one,

Teamwork
I think that the biggest issue that our group is going to face during the term is going to be building the bridge. No one of us has previous experience with bridges or structures. Anyway I am confident that our teamwork will result successful in the end. My group mates are my friends so it makes it easy to work with them. I think that most important thing in a teamwork is that each of the team members does something specific. A positive thing about my group is that all of us have three different majors, Architectural Engineering, Civil Engineering and Computer Engineering; which I think makes us perfect to work on this project. Soichiro may work more than the others in designing the bridge, I may work more on building it and Jonathan might work more with our blog. Anyway I think that each one of us should be part of every process so in the end each one of us knows in detail what we did. I am really into this project, since I think it's related to my major and I am confident that in the end we will do really good.

Disel - Week 3 Blog Entry

This week we used the West  Point Bridge Designer software to make a simple design of a bridge. Using the software was really easy and we were able to try may different things in a short time. We tried a lot of shapes but we realized that triangles are the best shape to work with because they are really stable  We also started to design our own bridge and looked for which design seemed the best. Even that we worked with the software, trying to design a bridge which would be stable so the truck could pass we were not able to design a bridge during the lab. I think that we should work more with West Point Bridge Designer software so we can build a bridge with the best performance which means that can be stable and doesn't cost too much.


Here are some questions that I want to ask Mr. Bhatt:

 1.) What would be a price in the market for a two lanes bridge 44m long that has no pier or cable anchorages  made from medium-strength concrete?

 2.) Which type of triangle is the most stable one?

A1 -Spahija

My bridge is based in triangles, especially in the top part. First my bridge had a lot of triangles which would make the cost really expensive. I reduced some of triangles which made the cost less than 500,000$ but I will keep trying to reduce the numbers of triangles so that the cost will not be as much as it is right now, 488,179.60 $ . For future improvements I am going to also try different shapes of triangles until I find the perfect triangle for each part.

Jonathan- Week 3 Blog Entry

During our third week of engineering lab, we finally got to use the West Point Bridge Designer program. Although we didn't have any background knowledge about bridges, we were able to find out what kinds of structures worked and which didn't. It was a great learning experience at the time for not having previous knowledge. Now that we know a bit more about WPBD, we are able to create our own designs that can won't collapse. We haven't really had any problems as a group, and I think we will be able to respect each other's designs when we show them to each other. We will probably take the best components from all of our designs and morph them into a super bridge. The only issue we had was that we couldn't get a functioning bridge during the class time.
Here are some questions that I want to ask Mr. Bhatt:
1) How do I know which bridge works best under which scenario? I.E why can't I use a suspension bridge all the time?
2) What are all of the variables I need be aware of when designing a bridge?
3) What are the normal price ranges for bridges? or how expensive/cheap have bridges been? 

A1 -Fischer

These are the pictures for the design of my bridge. For the bottom and top section of my bridge, I decided to stick to using right triangles as I believe they support the most stress out of all of the different kinds of triangles. I also try to use them in the middle section, but I found it hard to make it stable so I ended up using other kinds to make it symmetrical. I started off by following the Pratt design template and just worked my way from there.
The price for this bridge is roughly $453,775.37. I have no idea if that is a lot of money for a bridge of for this task, but I'm sure I can lower the cost by a significant amount after I figure out how a bridge works.
I learned that right triangles work better than equilateral and isosceles triangles. With that knowledge, I changed all of my other kinds of triangles to right triangles. I don't really under stand the physics yet, but that will probably be one of the things I'll look into. For the future, I plan on getting rid of those red support structures in my last picture and turn them gray.

Skip - Week 3 Blog Entry

This week, we actually used the West  Point Bridge Designer to get a hang of what the software is like. We also started designing our own bridges and looked for which designs seemed the best. We were able to play around with the shapes and structures of the bridge and see that the bridges with triangles seemed like to be the most stable. We were not able to come up with a strong structure that will hold the truck up too, but we were able to figure out that triangles in the structure work best. We agreed as a team to further improve on our bridge designs in the coming week using the best parts of each of our designs. The major accomplishment this week was that the team as a whole was able to understand how to work the program and how triangles in the structure of a bridge make the structure sturdier. There were no issues within the team, but we were not able to come up with a strong bridge that could hold the truck during the class period so we have to work on that.

Questions I would want to ask to Mr. Jay Bhatt are,

1. How do compression and tension forces relate to the structure of the bridge?
2. What is the preferred bridge type in certain circumstances and restraints?
3. What is the strongest bridge design?
4. Where can I find information about strong bridges under certain limited conditions?

A1 -Minami

My bridge design is shaped in this form because I wanted to create a strong bridge with many triangles. My bridge contains nothing but triangles of which are different shape and size.

My bridge changed during design by adding more triangles of different shape. I was initially thinking of a bridge that are basically made out of triangles that were of same size and shape, but I realized that it was better to add triangles of different shape and size so I added them to the design. 

The cost of this bridge is estimated to be $433,877.05. I think that this cost could be cut down to about $400,000 with further time and knowledge.

From designing this bridge, I learned that a bridge that uses triangles in its structure is strong. Not only that, but the more variety of triangles the bridge has, it seems like the bridge is stronger and can withstand more weight. For further improvements, I would like to make the bridge more strong and stable by adding more triangles into the structure. 

Week 2 Blog Post- Jonathan

In our week 1 lab, we formed into groups of 3 and watched a power point presentation about the course. Our team has agreed on this website for using blogs. I think the only issues we have right now is that we don't have any designated roles for anyone, but we will solve them in the coming weeks.

Teamwork
I think the major problems our group will have is that we all have almost zero experience with bridge design. We will probably have some issues with deciding who gets to do what, but we can probably just help each other out as we go through it. I have had a lot of experience with creating blogs, so I have mentioned to my teammates that I could be in charge with most of the blog work. As far as roles go, it really doesn't matter to me who is the Leader or Meeting Recorder. I feel I can suit into any of those roles well enough, but I feel we can all take turns fulfilling these roles to find out who does each job best. We have agreed to talk every decision over no matter how small the adjustment will be. Disel is my roommate and I've known Soichiro for the whole year so I think we can overcome all of these problems since we are already at the "Norming" phase, which saves us time from the Forming and Storming phases. Since I know both of them really well, we won't have any issues communicating with each other and we will be able to share all of our ideas easily.

Skip - Week 2 Blog Entry

In week one's class, we had an overview of the ENGR103-035 class, and we also looked at some bridges across the US and looked at its structures and shapes. Because it was the first week, we did not do a lot of stuff. My teammates and I have agreed to play around with the West Point Bridge Designer and actually start thinking about what our design of the bridge should be. The major accomplishment this week was just getting the idea of what the class will be like and finding out what we are going to be doing in the class. There are no issues whatsoever so far because I know who my team mates are, and I have no trouble working with them. We just have to figure out what we are going to do in the future for our designing of the bridge.

I think that the biggest issue that I will face through the term is how to design the bridge. All of the members in my group including myself have almost no experience with bridges and so I think that we will have disputes on how to design the bridge because all of us do not know exactly what to do. We will most likely have different ideas and because none of us have experience, we may have disputes on who's idea is better. When this happens, we will need to calmly discuss our ideas and listen to what the others say. The last thing I want is the group to fall apart because we could not decide on whose design was better. I am also sure that there will be the problem of who gets to do what. There will be some things which everyone will want to do, and some things that no one will want to do. In this situation, we will have to talk as a group once again until we come to a consensus and we can all agree on something. In both cases, it is important to talk as a group and communicate with one another. I do not think I will have problems communicating with others because I have known my group members for a while and I have no problem communicating with them. Even if they were people I had never met before, I am confident in my communication skills so I believe that I can calmly talk to my members and figure out a solution to our problems.

Week 1: We established a blog website.