nabethg / matboard-bridge

small-scale box girder bridge

Matboard Bridge

A small-scale box girder bridge designed in an iterative cross-section design process to withstand a moving load of 1220 N via numerical assessment in MATLAB and fabricated in matboard.

Design Details

Please find the details of the design decisions, apparatus, and the fabrication process in the report document.

Bridge Dimensions ¹

Dimensional constraints outlining the maximum allowed dimensions of the bridge in elevation

• The total length of the bridge must be between 1250 and 1270 mm
  • Main span, support center to center distance, 1200 mm + support plates
• The maximum height of the bridge at the two support locations is 200 mm
• Support locations must contain a flat portion of 50 mm for the bridge to sit on the support plates
• The minimum deck width is 100 mm
  • The deck must be horizontal and permit unhindered passage of the train. There can be no steps or grooves on the top surface for the train wheels to roll over
• Ensure that your bridge design fits in the building envelope shown above

Bridge Loading ¹

• A train containing 3 segments will be pushed across your bridge subjecting it to gravity loads
  • The dimensions of the train are shown below
  • The initial weight of the train will be 400N
  • The weight of the train will be progressively increased until bridge failure

Train dimensions

Loading schematic showing the movement of the train

Computation

Please find the details of the failure hand calculation and code output of design 0 and code output of the final design in the calculations document.

Matlab Script

The MATLAB script main.m generates shear force and bending moment capacities for eight principle modes of failure as outlined in calculation procedure, by considering the cross section at different positions of the bridge as encapsulated by cross_section.m

Design 0	Final design

Subplots depicting the shear force and bending moment capacities to their envelopes as a function of distance along the bridge for design 0 and the final design

Team Members

Samuel Chen — report content

Nabeth Ghazi (nabethg) — programmer/maintainer

Gabriel Lowy

Najma Sultani

Acknowledgments

This project was part of the CIV102 course offered to first-year Engineering Science students by the University of Toronto Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering.

Calculations procedure, design 0, and some content in this README document have been derived from the assignment outline.

License

GNU General Public License Version 3

Footnotes

1. As specified in the assignment outline. ↩ ↩²