Cameron Week 8

After working with the Method of Joints Truss Analysis, I do not believe that this type of analysis would be sufficient for a bridge in the real world.  In the real world the force is not constantly applied to the same position of the bridge, in most cases the force being applied is moving across the bridge in the form of a car, a train, a tractor trailer, or perhaps a person walking across a foot bridge.  This method assumes a constant force in the same position which is ideal, but not realistic. 

One concept that this method does not take into consideration are the forces acting on the side of the bridge.  In the real world there may be wind and/or torsional forces that could exert forces on the faces of the truss.  To incorporate these forces it could be useful to use the same method and add a third dimension.  The only reservation to this suggestion is that wind may be somewhat unpredictable, but a rough overestimation could be used to determine whether the bridge would be able to withstand the forces acting on it.

Last week in class we chose to work on our bridge rather than compute the truss analysis.  We felt that this was the best use of our time as the truss analysis proved to be relatively simple.  We used elements of our 24" bridge and elongated them to be able to span 36".  This week our class time will be devoted to testing and tweaking the bridge we created last week in class before the actual testing in Week 9.