Sam Platz
1) I gave an educated guess based on what i had seen the other groups bridges hold and because i knew my bridge had several flaws that would make it hold less than that of other groups. my guess was 80 pounds2. i thought my bridge would break in the support cross beams first and then the road deck would fail which is what happened with our bridge during the test. the reason was that the cables were not thick enough to hold the bridge and there were several very apparent flaws with the supports such as the glue holding them was not very strong.
3-4) i believe it broke at 136 pounds the reason was that the supports could not hold any more than that and the cables simply stretched until the road deck snapped.
5) i really liked the design of the tower and i feel had it been built to the best of our ability it would have done greatly and most likely would not have broken.
6) i really disliked the design and implementation of the road deck and i wish we had designed it better with possibly a truss design and had made it more solid and much less flexible.
7) the hardest part i thought was balancing the towers so that they would not be uneven and fall over. it was not only difficult to do this but also it was hard to cut it evenly and not to cut too much off.
8) braiding the cables due to the fact that i could not do it and neither could jake and it required to be done very well or not at all and we didn't even produce enough anyway due to the time frame we gave ourselves.
9) redesigning the road deck and upgrading the cables would be my two largest priorities and i could reinforce the tower itself.
10) the cables were supposed to be the first thing to break over all if i had built it the way i really had wanted too.
3-4) i believe it broke at 136 pounds the reason was that the supports could not hold any more than that and the cables simply stretched until the road deck snapped.
5) i really liked the design of the tower and i feel had it been built to the best of our ability it would have done greatly and most likely would not have broken.
6) i really disliked the design and implementation of the road deck and i wish we had designed it better with possibly a truss design and had made it more solid and much less flexible.
7) the hardest part i thought was balancing the towers so that they would not be uneven and fall over. it was not only difficult to do this but also it was hard to cut it evenly and not to cut too much off.
8) braiding the cables due to the fact that i could not do it and neither could jake and it required to be done very well or not at all and we didn't even produce enough anyway due to the time frame we gave ourselves.
9) redesigning the road deck and upgrading the cables would be my two largest priorities and i could reinforce the tower itself.
10) the cables were supposed to be the first thing to break over all if i had built it the way i really had wanted too.
Nick Moore
1) We guessed that our first break would be around 130 pounds. The bridge broke at 135 pounds.
2) The two beams underneath the deck that supports the parallel towers were the first things to break. As the deck pushed down from the weight, it started to put too much stress on the beams causing them to crack and ultimately break. We saw how much some of the other bridges could handle and we guessed based off of our design, the design of the other bridges, and previous stress tests. I thought our bridge would break in the middle due to lack of support. The triangle tower design made it quite difficult to get as many suspension cables as we could. Working around the design of the triangle tower would cause the cables to be placed oddly and have weird angles. Another option was to drill small holes in the towers to feed the cables through. This option could have hurt our bridge rather than help it.
3) I like my bridge because I made it. I’m proud that I was able to build a suspension bridge with the materials provided and the little knowledge I have about building bridges. I dislike the truss system we built in the towers themselves. Making and installing the truss system was the most time consuming part of building our bridges. I thought braiding cables was going to be the hardest thing to do, really the hardest part was tensioning the cables.
4) If I could do anything differently during this project I would have to say less improvising and more order. I am unsure where the bridge would break if we had done this, but I would have to say in the middle where the weight is being applied or at the towers.
2) The two beams underneath the deck that supports the parallel towers were the first things to break. As the deck pushed down from the weight, it started to put too much stress on the beams causing them to crack and ultimately break. We saw how much some of the other bridges could handle and we guessed based off of our design, the design of the other bridges, and previous stress tests. I thought our bridge would break in the middle due to lack of support. The triangle tower design made it quite difficult to get as many suspension cables as we could. Working around the design of the triangle tower would cause the cables to be placed oddly and have weird angles. Another option was to drill small holes in the towers to feed the cables through. This option could have hurt our bridge rather than help it.
3) I like my bridge because I made it. I’m proud that I was able to build a suspension bridge with the materials provided and the little knowledge I have about building bridges. I dislike the truss system we built in the towers themselves. Making and installing the truss system was the most time consuming part of building our bridges. I thought braiding cables was going to be the hardest thing to do, really the hardest part was tensioning the cables.
4) If I could do anything differently during this project I would have to say less improvising and more order. I am unsure where the bridge would break if we had done this, but I would have to say in the middle where the weight is being applied or at the towers.
Conrrado Alberran-Hernandez