When approaching the task of designing the bridge I wanted to have a split between being structurally sound as well as cost effective. The West Point Bridge Designer gave the objective of a bridge that crossed over a river. I also wanted to try and mimic the sort of design that was used for the Betsy Ross Bridge. Like everything else that is designed my bridge design was tweaked a lot.
Bridge Design
Load Test Results
During the past week that was spent designing the bridge it started off as one of the preformed models. The Warren Deck Truss was the original design and it seemed to be an efficient bridge that kept its shape fairly well. Later in the week after fiddling around with materials to lower the overall cost of the bridge I decided to play around with the idea of putting the Warren Through Truss on top of the Warren Deck Truss. The cost went up at first but the stability of the entire structure seemed to improve. I also changed the size of the supports as well as the materials that they were made of.
In the end the bridge had a total cost of $360,443.52 which in my opinion is not as bad as the $500,000.00 that the bridge started off as. I believe this can be decreased with further knowledge of exactly how the dispersion of force works on different types of bridges. The biggest thing that I personally have learned for designing this bridge is that very minute details can dictate whether a bridge stays together or breaks down.
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