West Point Bridge Design Harrison Davis

James Swaim
Team 008

Background Design
The purpose of the project was to go through the process of designing
various bridges in order to learn about the Engineering Design Process. We
used Bridge Designer 2016 for the design and testing

The goal was to design four bridges under the following

conditions: *Loading for all was a 225kN Truck* Bridge A Bridge B
A. Deck elevation: 16m, Support Configuration: Arch abutments with a height of 8m, no pier, and no
cable anchorages, Deck Material: Medium-Strength Concrete, Budget: $184,000
B. Deck Elevation: 8m, Support Configuration: standard abutments, pier of 0m, no cable
anchorages, Deck Material: Medium-Strength Concrete, Budget: $188,000
C. Deck Elevation: 20m, Support Configuration: standard abutments, no pier, two cable anchorages,
Deck Material: Medium-Strength Concrete, Budget: $215,000
D. Deck Elevation: 4m, Support Configuration: standard abutments, pier of 0m, no cable
anchorages, Deck Material: Medium-Strength Concrete, Budget: $182,000
Bridge C Bridge D
Results Conclusions
Bridge # of Iterations Time Cost Challenges:
Processes: A 71 1 hr. $181,626.73
• The strength to cost ratio of Quenched
and Tempered steel is the best of all the
B 153 2 hr. $187,667.85 • Finding a starting bridge design that worked was a challenge on some of the bridges.
C 47 1 hr. $200,998.22 This was mostly due to the large members weighing down the rest of the structure
materials, so all designs were started
with this material
D 20 1 hr. $181,796.48 • Even after optimizing the bridges, some of the designs wouldn’t come under budget,
Comp. 54 1 hr. $186,951.98 and an entirely new style of truss had to be designed.
• The table of compression and tension
tables allowed us to decrease member size using a measurable reference • Sometimes changing to a larger member to save on the extra material charge
• Any member that was under more tension than compression was made into a weighed down the rest of the truss, causing a previously working design to fail
solid bar instead of a hollow tube
• After reducing the sizes of all of the members, some would be changed to the Engineering Design Process:
next size up in order to eliminate the additional material charge
• Some materials were under almost no stress. These were sometimes changed This project was an example of how testing and careful design can result in a strong
to the smallest size of carbon steel possible to save money design at a reasonable price. Having a budget requirement and specific site
• If a truss could be re-designed to require fewer joints, it was in order to save specifications taught us to work with constraints and still deliver a good product.
on the additional connection charge