Bridge Project

By: Corey Hurlburt, Brayden Dostal and Dillon Cobb

Project
Requirements/Goal

The goal for our group is to construct a bridge to support 10x its own weight. The
bridge can not exceed 1 inch of thickness on any of its beams.
Materials:
- Wood
- Plastic (3D Printed Parts
- Nails
- Expanding, wood, and super glue.
Requirements:
- Minimum Length: 26 centimeters
- Minimum Width: 8 centimeters
- Minimum Height: 8 centimeters
West point Bridge Designer
Model
Our bridge design was based on a model we had made in
West Point 2015 Bridge designer, and inspired by bridge
that crosses the Licking River into Cincinnati. We found
that equilateral triangles make the strongest and simplest
bridges. This became the basis for the design process.
West Point Bridge Designer Statistics
Our Drawing
This was our final design, minus
the appendaged supports on the
left and right sides. It consisted of
3 equilateral triangles, connected
vial glue and 3D printed truss
connectors. The shaded areas
show where these connectors are
on the bridge.

(Our original drawing was

destroyed due to unknown
circumstances)
Designing the Bridge
This is the start of our design process. We decided on 3 equilateral triangles with a
1” x .5” beam on the bottom to act as the the “road.” These pictures are the first
couple days of the challenge, where we cut to length our rods and glued together the
first parts. This was also around the time when we decided to cut the appendaged
supports on the left and right sides and just go for the 3 main triangles.
Building the Bridge
Testing the bridge

Our bridge worked extremely well, specific results on the next page.
Results
Weight (g) 239 g

Weight (N) 2.34 N

Held (N) >1069.3 N

Deflect (cm) 0.75 cm

Strength Ratio >444

Stiffness 364.5

We were the third results down

from the top.

Our bridge weighed 239 grams,

and held 1069.3 Newtons, maxing
out the machine. Our strength ratio
was over 444, with a deflection of
.75 cm and stiffness of 592.1
(strength to deflection).
Inventor
This is our inventor design of
our bridge. Each part and
connecter was replicated to
scale.
3D
ANIMATION
Expectations

At first when we found out our bridge had to hold ten times our weight, we were
skeptical about it as we didn’t know how much bridges could hold. As we started
to build our bridge and messing around with it, we found out it could handle being
tossed around like a ball, and could handle us pulling on it, that’s when we knew it
could hold at least ten times its weight.
Conclusions
We learned from this challenge that simple but well put together
bridges work just fine compared to a complicated but poorly put
together bridge. Our system of equilateral triangles made our bridge
super strong.