Opera Bar Assignment

Rhino, Grasshopper, and Presentation

Blog Submission

Week 1: Horizontal Bridges

Bridge 1:

This bridge design uses a basic truss design, the materials used were skewers and rubber bands. We chose to use a truss design as it has been proven to be effective over longer spans while being efficient with materials. Our deck was made out of foam. This bridge could carry all stacks of paper and a person pushing down. As the person pushed down the members of the bridge started unrealistically bending showing where the failure would’ve been if steel beams were used in this design. The joints in the middle of the truss were the weakest points.

Bridge 2:

This second bridge uses foam, nylon cloth, rubber bands and skewers. The deck was made out of foam. This design uses a cable stayed design where tension stress is put on the ‘cables’ or the skewers and nylon in this case. Thin foam strips were placed on the sides where the vertical beams were fixed for added stability. Underneath the deck is a single truss that is put in compression and tension. The bridge was able to take full weight and failed where the members met the two tables, as it started drastically bending.

Bridge 3:

This was the paper only bridge. The deck was made out of foam. The bridge uses a similar method to reinforced concrete, where multiple rolls of paper are lined up next to each other and then wrapped around in one larger piece of paper. This method, while effective, uses too many resources as it took a whole 256 page book to make as well as a larger card paper. Weaknesses were the middle of the bridge where the paper was the thinnest as there were slight inflections showing as weight was being put on.

Week 2: Vertical Support

Bridge 1:

This bridge uses a triangle/diamond shaped design so the joints are dynamic once weight is added. Skewers and fishing line was used to make the structure. They were stacked on top of each other, where the weakness was primarily in between the joints in the middle of the members. If the minimum high of the bridge was higher, members would be needed to put in between each layer where they would definitely fail, however if more skewers were added to members it would be different.

Bridge 2:

Uses a square truss design where multiple skewers were used for members and were joined through rubber bands. As weight was added the structure started getting pressed down, reducing in height.

Bridge 3:

Paper bride, uses rolls of paper shaped as a triangle wrapped in a larger piece of paper. As weight was added it compressed showing the failure of members.

All these designs would be different if the minimum height was increased so an actual truss inspired design could be implemented. 

Week 3: Vertical Stability

This objective of this design was to use the minimum amount of playing cards to achieve the tallest tower possible, it would then take a strength test by applying "wind" force to it and see how long it can last. Our design was based on cutting slits into each card and slotting them into each other, with every being oriented in the opposite axis, X and Y. The main problem we had with our design was the lack of foundation at the bottom of the tower, meaning it would fall over with a small amount of force. If more cards were added to the base, this would not have occurred.

Videos
Week 1&2
Week 3