Last week, we were able to make some more finishing touches to our bridges. Disel got to test his version of his bridge, but it didn't turn out as good as he expected. Soichiro got to test his bridge later in the class and it turned to be a lot cheaper that holds more weight. I think it cost around $100k and it held around 15 lbs. The key to making this bridge was that we didn't use any grooved pieces so we can try and make it pretty cheap. We will make more modifications to this bridge and we will probably end up using something similar to what we have now for the final bridge competition. I think the main fault in this bridge is that it follows the same pattern throughout the whole bridge and it is not reinforced in the middle so it might end up breaking down the center. Another problem is that we are unsure of how to improve the design of the bridge, since it held so much weight the first time.
I have learned a great deal about designing bridge from this class. One is that it is a lot easier to try a design out on the computer before you actually build it. This allows you to see basic outcomes as to where some of the pressure is building up on, so you can easily alter the bridge to dissipate the pressure. Another thing I have learned is that there isn't simply one good design that will win the competition. Since the competition relies on the weight/cost ratio, there are many ways to try and win. An example is that you can go for a very heavy bridge that holds a lot of weight, or the opposite, which seems to be more effective. Hand-calculating the pressures on the bridge is possible and is very important if there isn't a computer program that can do it for you as it can take quite a lot of time.
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