Overview

What We'll Be Doing This Term

We'll be exploring the design process used for large projects - buildings, bridges, highways, airplanes and so on. In all these the final object is so expensive and long-duration that one cannot build it full size, test it and try again. Instead we work with substitutes for the full thing, whether on paper, computer screen or in model form. We define it's physical shape and then work to understand how it will behave when completed. Further, we almost always work in teams undertaking this work.

Projects

We'll undertake a number of projects with both individual and group work:

• Design and test a bridge using computer software - West Point Bridge Designer
  • Each team member will design a bridge individually
  • Each group will pick one of the three to refine for a class competition for the lowest cost bridge
• Design and test a model of a bridge using a scale model tool - Knex
  • Design a bridge on "paper" individually - each component has a price
  • Choose one bridge design for the team to build
  • Test the bridge to destruction in a class competition for the best Cost/Weight Ratio
  • Examine why the bridge failed (forensic analysis)
• Analyze the Forces in a Bridge Individually
  • Using the "Method of Joints"
  • Interactively using online Software - Bridge Designer
• Design and Build a 2nd bridge using Knex
  • Design and build the bridge using what you've learned from the analysis
  • Test the bridge to destruction in a class competition for the best Cost/Weight Ratio

Documenting Your Work

Each team will maintain a team blog throughout the term. The blog will be the location for:

• Individually - Each team member will:
  • Document your participation in the team each week
  • Respond to a question or issue that is defined on these pages for that week
  • Document your individual designs and analyses
• Team
  • Document your team projects both before and after completion

Different Rules From Most Sections of ENGR-103

Because we are doing things differently than most sections in the course only the assignments given here are required. There will be good advice in some of the general lectures on report writing and design, but you do NOT have to turn in the assignments identified there, only the assignments defined in these pages. The schedule we'll keep is our own.

Acknowledgment

Many of the ideas and exercises in this course draw from work developed by Prof. Lou DaSaro in the spring of 2010.