College Senior Design Project

[FlyingDutchman]

Hey everyone, thought I might share my senior design project that I spent 300 hours on that began in Sept. for two 2cr classes. I am a senior civil engineering major at Geneva college (western PA, between Pitt/SRU) graduating in May. Up until this point I have had nothing but theory classes and finally got to get involved in a design/build project.

The project was to design/build a steel bridge to take a certain load and design around a ton of rules/parameters. A competition is hosted by the AISC/ASCE every year with a regional and national level that judges weight, speed to construct, aggregate deflection, and display. Overall, we did great (4th of 14) considering the schools we went against (CSU, YSU, CM, UA, etc.). I know it's probably not of too much interest to most people here but there is a lot of steel and welding pics.

You don't need a Facebook to visit the link below (it's definitely worth visiting!):

Geneva Steel Bridge pictures

My favorite parts of the project were physically seeing the theories used and assumptions made plus I learned how to weld (MIG) and ended up welding the entire thing myself .. As you can see from the pics, there was a lot of that to do ..



For the mechanical engineers/car lovers, my school is also involved in the SAE Baja competition. They are heading to TN this week for a series of competitions (accel, braking, rock climb, endurance, etc.).



Anyone else have any cool senior design projects to share?

[LTb1ow]

Designed, did FEA and built a jeep bro haiii suspension piece, essentially a torque arm for a leaf spring setup.

Two classes out of all the years I actually use at work.

[sweetbmxrider]

Did you get to keep it?

[V]

would have been kinda cool to see the failure point of all those designs. basically to see which were really over engineered and which met the bare requirements.

[LTb1ow]

Originally Posted by sweetbmxrider

Did you get to keep it?

Yea, its on the one guy's jeep

[sweetbmxrider]

I meant the bridge

[FlyingDutchman]

I'm in a finite class now, we used robot structural analysis (uses fea) and ANSYS for computer models along with hand calcs for verification. The computer was spot on with our results, cool stuff! Got any pics of said suspension piece?


I'll look into the yield failure point for our bridge, it's most likely in those spokes. For some bridges, the 2,500lbs was too much (ahem carnegie) .. Big fail IMO since its known ...


Haha I don't get to keep it, but it might be sold next year for a fundraiser.

[Paul Huryk]

I went to NJIT and my Civil engineering buddies did something similar, just with wood instead of steel.

In my sophmore year (as an ME), I had gotten involved with the SAE team there, but left when I realized that that the members were more interested in arguing about the minute details (which really didin't matter) than actually building a competitive car. Lesson learned for my entry into the business world a few years later.

[V]

from the pics, id say the one with the black rounded arches probably did pretty well.

[LTb1ow]

Originally Posted by 97camaro

I'm in a finite class now, we used robot structural analysis (uses fea) and ANSYS for computer models along with hand calcs for verification. The computer was spot on with our results, cool stuff! Got any pics of said suspension piece?


I'll look into the yield failure point for our bridge, it's most likely in those spokes. For some bridges, the 2,500lbs was too much (ahem carnegie) .. Big fail IMO since its known ...


Haha I don't get to keep it, but it might be sold next year for a fundraiser.

Ya few images of teh FEA


ANSYS blows to use.

Any design pics of your bridge? Always find it cool to confirm hand calcs with FEA, granted they both could just be giving the right answer to the wrong question

[FlyingDutchman]

Originally Posted by V

from the pics, id say the one with the black rounded arches probably did pretty well.

If you're referring to the green/black one, they didn't construct it within 30 mins, so they were DQ'd and no load tests were done. I think it weighed around 5-600#. That bridge was a hog podge of previous bridges, no engineering behind it, probably would have failed lol Im guessing they would have failed at the plates as they were like 1/32" thick. I designed ours based on a simplified beam (didn't know enough FEA at that point). They were also missing bolts ...

Originally Posted by LTb1ow

Any design pics of your bridge? Always find it cool to confirm hand calcs with FEA, granted they both could just be giving the right answer to the wrong question

I'll find more, we also used STAAD.Pro for a 3rd opinion. For the most part, we came up with a rough idea and put it in robot struct and just reiterated and changed things until we came up with something that would meet the criteria. I like ANSYS, granted its 14.5 now, but I just input whatever I want from AutoCAD and go from there and get pretty pictures like the one you posted.


On a side note, did you take the FE ? I know you're an ME so its not quite as big

[LTb1ow]

Nah, was not required of me for job, so decided to not waste a day and a lot of money.

Prob will regret that choice later, but I have only know one PE and I know a few engineers.