In the history of mankind, many engineers, and architects have initiated many projects dealing with the constructions of various forms of bridges that allowed the movement of goods across a natural divide, such as streams of rivers, lakes etc. in earlier times. As time passes, bridges also began to develop over other roads, railways, and deep gulleys situated on the land at sea levels for efficient transportation from one place to another. Similar to any other engineering projects, projects dealing with construction of new bridges in particular locations require a significant effort in planning, collaboration with team members, and properly utilize mathematics, science, and computer technologies as problem-solving tools to formulate new designs, which directly fulfills the engineering design process at all times. One engineer will essentially recognize that some bridges, such as Rafiganj Rail Bridge and Tacoma Narrows Bridge, eventually destruct into pieces mainly because of the project team’s lack of adherence to the engineering design process and deep framing about exterior factors that can impact the overall stability of the bridges before the official constructions (Bridges DB, 2017). This truly has happened in history from past to present as it is not only harmful to the society who rely on bridges as major forms of transportations, but also to the overall economic sector of the country as engineers will waste even more time and money for long-term civil projects.
In real life, building a model bridge is a very challenging task to accomplish, but it is not impossible to achieve if an efficient project team can bring a lot of specialized scientific and mathematical knowledge into the table as well as utilize them to develop a design-construction process for the final product, such as a bridge or a facility. This Project Team typically consists of four specialists by name-the Owner, the Design Professional, the Constructor, and the Project Manager (J. Ressler, 2001). Above all else, the Owner of the Project Team does four main tasks: identifies the need for a new facility, provides financial funding for the project, selects and hires specialists to carry out the project, and establishes the design requirements. Next, the Design Professional works out mainly in a civil engineering project by conceiving, planning, and submitting a set of design plans and specifications to the Owner. Furthermore, the Design Professional’s main duty at the near end of the construction process is to make sure his drafted plans and specifications would grammatically and logically make sense to the Constructor, so the chosen design can transform into a realistic final product that societies will rely upon for various purposes.
After the Design Professional submits his designs and lists of specifications to the Owner of the Project Team, the Owner gives them to the Constructor (construction contractor), who accomplishes the following objectives: delivers a final product for the Owner punctually, develop and manage proper project schedules with the given lists of plans and specifications, carefully manage the project budget (expenses and payments/costs), and exhibit effective inspections and testing of materials used to construct a facility or a building complex on a routinely basis. The routine of continuously checking over various variables, such as the materials previously utilized, as the project progresses further ensures to the subcontractors, and the main construction contractor that no mistakes would devastate the stability of the final-constructed facility.
Another individual who nearly contributes by roughly the same percentage as the Project Owner does is the Project Manager primarily because he serves the interests of the owner and further looks after the owner’s matters on all aspects of the construction project, which involves during scheduling, financial management brainstorming, and routine inspections of the building process. Since both the Constructor and the Design Professional are rarely involved in the engineering design process, the Project Manager must continuously engage in active coordinations of the project from the beginning till the completion of the construction phase.
Generally, basswood is light and smooth with economical strength characteristics that are not capable of providing much durability for various building structures, especially for shopping and facility complexes. Specifically, basswood is not strong enough to shape and turn the wood into usable trusses that can be used to provide ductility and stability of the mini-structures, but it is possible for one to bend the basswood for stable usage if it weighs around 26 lbs per cubic foot at 12% moisture content and dries somewhere else with open air (Cassens, 2007). Basswood can also in color from pale white to brown and easy to work with for carvings and other construction-related tasks mainly because of the lack of odor and strong glue adhesion with other materials (Meier, 2015). Given the fact that basswood has some weak characteristics in terms of evaluating its’ reliance as a fundamental wood material for construction, one would finally conclude that basswood surely can not provide the ductility and strength the final bridge truly needs, thus emphasizing the need for another outlook on wood products that can provide the required firmness.
For any civil engineering project, putting an emphasis on inquiry behind certain materials before the official initiation of the construction is really important in today’s world because all materials that are being planned to be utilized by engineers and architects could perhaps have an impact on major physical forces, such as gravity, compression, and tension, flowing through the structures. Moreover, bridges and buildings are typically built based on “trusses”–frameworks supporting the beam ends of the structure for stability and breakage prevention. In order to promote bridge structures the necessary stability and capacity to counteract against strong physical forces, school and college students can use at least seven popsicle sticks and seven small binder clips to create trusses in any shape.
Meanwhile, as one student completes a procedure from the Scientific American website, he or she will recognize that squared-trusses are easier to rotate than triangle-trusses in the end, thus leaving a major sign of whether the bridge structures will achieve the obligatory ductility (S. Buddies, 2015). Although having squared-trusses rotating at all angles is fine at least from the online procedure, rotating trusses can actually be disastrous mainly because if one truss member rotates 360 degrees clockwise or counterclockwise, then the rest of the truss members will rotate in the same direction. This final result can be metaphorically compared with the Domino Theory from American History course, which mainly discusses that multiple subjects to fall into trap simply from one subject under one particular influence or movement. According to the engineering concept of “degrees of freedom,” a zero degree of freedom from triangle trusses suggest that all truss members (popsicle sticks) are fixed in place and not rotate or deform at all.
Thus, one would be able to conclude that the lesser the degrees of freedom, the greater there is a chance for truss structures to become stable and immovable against various physical forces.
One should also keep in mind that designers can come up with elegant designs, yet screw up their bridge structures at the end if they use inappropriate type of wood and glue. Therefore, one should eventually look for a glue that can provide quicker drying time, affordable price, normal weight, higher strength and compatibility before starting to build bridge structures from the preliminary designs (Boon, 2005). This would a good thing for every designer to acknowledge the previously-described criteria mainly because he or she would not create designs just because he or she feels that they would look nice, so constructing bridge structures in the real world successfully truly requires the designer to possess higher ambitions and interests, which is why setting up a criteria is significant in the engineering field.
Cyanoacrylate Super Glue has specific advantages: dries materials very quickly compared to other glues found in the markets, extremely strong to use for joining the bridge materials, such as wood and Popsicle Sticks, and leaves out little residue in the surroundings every time the glue is used (Ryan, 2016). If balsa wood is primarily used for constructing the bridge, then one should look toward utilizing “Titebond Wood Glue,” or a glue that can fulfill the majority of the criteria relied upon for official selection of a glue. According to “Titebond III: Ultimate Wood Glue” (2011), the wood glue can resist against water spillage. Not only that, it can be both cleaned up and handled quickly without putting much headache on contacting with it, and essentially provide bridge bond strength effectively from 45 degrees Fahrenheit or higher.
In the modern age of advanced architecture and civil engineering, increasing public concerns regarding the appearance of bridges and their effects in various communities has truly stimulated many engineers and architects into thinking of these opinions as serious matters that needs to be handled with strong creative thinking. Thus, every designer should not only think about the beautiness of the bridge design, but also what proper materials must be used to bring the design into a reality everyone will love to see and admire.
Considering aesthetics is quite simple, but often tedious because engineers would need to consider many factors by the time they start constructing their bridges in a community and brainstorming a lot of those ideas can take up a long time. What makes considering aesthetics simple though is that regardless of relatedness to the actual community, any designer or architect can develop designs that looks appealing and interesting in the first place. In order to bring appropriate aesthetics into the actual bridge structures, engineers would need to take into account the following things: understanding how the bridge will serve as the important feature or function of a chosen site, how the society will think about the inclusion of the bridge in that selected community, and how the bridge will meet all the required criteria and respond all of the major concerns once the construction process is finished (Gottemoeller et. al, 2009). Apart from the selection of an appropriate site, designers and bridge constructors should also determine how the newly-constructed structures will fit into the surroundings over time and what impact could the structure into the society, such as environmental pollutions and barriers from further constructions of home shelters etc.