Truss #1

Fmax = 51 lb

Weight = 2.6 g

Efficiency = 19.615

Truss #2

Fmax = 75 lb

Weight = 5.3 g

Efficiency = 14.15

Truss #2 Calculations

Name: Anish Roy

Class Period: 1B

Home Campus: Heritage High School

Project Objective: The objective of this project is to construct a truss building in accordance to preset design requirements and then test the maximum force the construction is able to withstand and then solve for the force on each member of the truss for 2 different trusses.

Learning Target: Understand how to both build and calculate the force on separate members of different types of trusses. Furthermore, understand how to calculate the efficiency of a constructed object.

Personal Reflection: Over the course of this project, I was significantly taken aback by how much simple wood member combinations would be able to hold, mine held upwards of 75 pounds. This was significantly impressive in my eyes because that is more than some human beings which means my creation would have been able to withstand the force of a human. Furthermore, over the course of this project, I was able to better understand how to calculate trusses and the online took which calculated the members' forces for me was a huge help as it helped me make sure that I was solving the members correctly. Furthermore, this served as additional practice in the creation of objects, during the first phase, I was supposed to construct the given truss and this helped me practice making perfect measurements and also gaining the ability to actually create the pieces up to standard and then the gluing part required some patience since it didn't look like I was doing it right at first, however, everything worked out. Additionally, this also helped me practice how to solve for individual components of trusses as I was able to solve for the forces on all the members multiple times. I feel as though my understanding and ability to apply my knowledge of trusses is more immense and perfected and I believe I will be able to replicate this on a real-life scenario of a truss. Furthermore, this also helped me gain more insight on how much small objects can carry before breaking as before I used to believe indefinitely that any small object, even if constructed brilliantly, would pale in comparison to a bigger creation, and while that may be true to a certain extent, there are instances where a better designed smaller object prevails over the bigger, bulkier one. While I did learn a lot of positive things, I did sometimes have some problems, for example, during my building process, I accidentally put too much glue on my creation and I needed the assistance of my peers to fix my mistake and while it may have worked out, I do need to work on being more careful and more cautious of the quantity of the amount I am using.

1) Explain why you think failure occurred at the truss member where it did. Did your truss fail at the member that your calculations revealed as undergoing the most stress?

I think failure occurred where it did because the member where it broke was supporting the most mass, and of course, the members which had the most force on them were the ones that were diagonal, but those pieces won't directly break, and of the straight pieces, the only one that was completely surrounded by stress was the bottom right member. Therein, my truss didn't fail at the member which I calculated to have the most force on it. Furthermore, there wasn't enough support on it because of it being at the bottom, hence it experienced a significant amount of force without any support whatsoever, even the diagonal pieces, where the force was greatest, had support from the lower members. Additionally, the only reason the other bottom member didn't break as well is because there was no force on it.

2) If given a chance to redesign your truss after testing, what changes would you make?

I would add vertical pieces to each of the joints and add horizontal members on the bottom and try to see if it can withstand a weight above 150 lb, and while it may be above the height limit for this project, it would be interesting to see how it goes.