Civil & Environmental Engineering (CE, EnvE)

Design Process

We first began with the activities surrounding the bridge and windmill so that we could understand the mechanics that went into building each respectively, and what the best approach for our personal designs would be. We next moved into the planning stage in which we used the simulations and 3D modeling to decide what we wanted our final product to look like. Once we had our respective designs for each, we began to build the products. For the windmill we chose to construct a frame for the base and then build upon that and lastly add the blades and motor. For the bridge we began with building individual parts such as the plank used for the walkway, pieces of the trust and abutments. After we had each component we began to piece everything together to create our final design.

July2_Bridge.MOV

Bridge

The bridge withstood a maximum load of 12 blocks. It only finally broke because we chose to take the roof supports off in order to try and add even more bricks. The bridge ultimately broke down the middle, as it twisted without the added support from the roof. Our bridge had two pillars holding up the planks with a trust going across the top.

July1Windmill.MOV

Windmill

Our windmill featured 4 blades, each at a 45 degree angle, with shape number 2. This was the most optimal configuration that we found. Our base was a trapezoid shape, with supports going across the top to stabilize the dowel. To support the motor and LED we built a plank connected to the main structure. While our LED was not on the whole time, it was pulsing on and off with a decent strength of the light. This was likely due to our base being slightly unstable, leading to the blades not spinning at the same rate for the entire rotation.

Challenges

The main obstacle that we encountered surrounding the windmill was that the original dowel used for the blades was under a lot of strain from the weight of the blades, causing it to bend significantly. We decided to try and switch out this dowel for the provided thicker one in order to have a stronger axis. We encountered a few problems when trying to switch this out, as it was securely attached to the blades, we therefore decided to just detach the blades individually to reconnect them to the new dowel. For our bridge we initially encountered some obstacles around the design stage as it was important to get all dimensions correct to optimize the strength of each region. We overcame this simply through trial and error and just working through the math, also with some assistance from Talah.

Windmill Activity

The goal of this activity was to determine the best design for our final windmill model. We constructed a test model out of plastic parts. We finally determined that the best design was with 4 blades, a 45 degree angle and with shape numeber 2, which we implemented in our final design.

ModelSmart3D ™ Bridge Design

We began with the ModelSmart3D ™ design to determine where the bridge might break, along with calculating the forces on all the members.

TinkerCad Windmill Design

Our windmill model was a first step in determining the desgin of our final build. While the CAD design was very similar to what we eventually implemented we did have to make minor changes along the way to ensure more stability for our final build.

Bridge CAD Design

After figuring out the best design for the forces on our bridge, we moved to the CAD design to plan out how we would go about actually building our bridge inperson.

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