I just realized I forgot to write about one of the
coolest things that I did this semester: design and
build a ten-foot pedestrian bridge with my team in my
"senior"civil and environmental engineering design
class. We were tasked with designing a bridge that would
hold 2,000 lbs, but it could be any style we wanted.
Our group got inspired by this bridge and decided to
make ours a rolling bridge as well. But we flipped the
design upside down so that all of the bottom members of
the truss could be made out of cable (the bottom members
only act in tension, never in compression). This made it
so we didn't have to make any kind of bracing mechanism
for the bridge when it was extended. As you can see from
the pictures, the bridge turned out rather elegantly,
and successfully held 2,000 lbs.
