Assignment: Individually design and create a bridge utilizing West Point Bridge Designer software. West Point Bridge Designer is a simplified and scaled-down computer-aided design tool developed by Colonel Stephen Ressler, Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering, U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York. The software will allow you to apply engineering design, material science, and statics to the design of a truss bridge carrying a two-lane highway that spans a riverbed. 

What I Learned: This project as a whole taught me various salient values, from technical civil engineering skills to good decision-making, however, the most valuable lesson that I learned from this experience was the ability to recognize that even a small change can lead to success. The initial design that I had built just comprised 160mm diameter rods which did pass the test by a huge margin, but unfortunately did surpass the budget of $400,00. To solve this issue, I tried using a rod diameter with a smaller diameter for my entire bridge at 130mm, which was under budget but did fail the test. Instead of using one uniform member diameter for the entire bridge, I tried to use a variety of diameters across different parts of the bridge. Consequently, the bridge ended up being much stronger in general, without compromising the expense. Even though I stuck with the same design, a small alteration that I made to the diameter of the rods that I used completely changed the outcome of my bridge.

What I Can Improve:  Even though my bridge was able to pass the main test, there is only one thing in this project that I could've improved upon. Firstly, the project genuinely revolved around authentic research and conceptual understanding, but my class, unfortunately, had to skip this part of this assignment due to conflicting schedules in class. As a result, it took longer for me to formulate and develop the right bridge since I was almost guessing what design would work out for me in the end. However, after doing some outside by myself, I was able to find a decent design for my bridge that help me pass the test. 

*The four justification questions are in the presentation above.