Construction Environments Week 4 Journal

Week 4 Tutorial program: Use 3 timbers and 1 thin board to construct a bridge in group. The bridge should bear the tension as high as possible.

(The construct steps)

(Use saw to cut the timber)

After the discussion, we decided to make the triangle structure because we think that can help the bridge to be more stable.

We cut the long timber in to three, and then cut the both ends. As the picture above, we cut two little triangle and the degree is 60 degree.

We use long screw and electric screw driver to make sure that the timber can be fixed together.

After that, we put the timber on the other and put two little triangles together to let it become a level.

Then, we put another timber on it as a bridge floor.

(Our final bridge)

The Tension Test

(Our bridge in the tension test)

(The other group’s bridge)

We put our bridge under the tension test machine. The machine shows that our bridge could bear 225kg tension.

The best bridge is designed in compact structure. The reason why they do this is they want to make the bridge stable and solid.

(The quadrangle and compact structure)

(The break point is with a screw)

After more than 300kg’s tension, the bridge breaks and the place that break is where they use screw. The teacher told us that it always happen because it breaks the original structure of the timer.