A3 - TRUSS ANALYSIS - Hidalgo

1)

Here are my calculations for the forces that are experienced by the members.

2)

Member	Force (N)
AC	22.23
AB	-31.43
BC	31.43
BD	-44.452
DC	31.43
DE	-31.43
CE	22.23
Total Weight	44.452

3)

4) The bridge designer is an easier way of calculating the forces that act on a certain bridge design, compared to part 1 this way is more effective. One of the restrictions of doing it with this software is that the load added is limited to multiples of 5 so to convert part 1 to this type of analysis a conversion had to be made not only to the load but also the design. Using similar triangles the scaling of the truss in part 1 to this analysis is easy by maintaing the angles between the triangles.

5)

One of the problems with this bridge designer is that it requieres the design to relate the number of nodes to the number of members so in the case of this truss it some of the design had to be taken out of the design so that the program would work. This analysis isn't accurate since the design isn't complete.

6) The results that are shown will be useful for our final design because we can now estimate how much force each of the connectors can resist before the member is forced out of the connectors socket. When designing the bridge its obvious that when more of the joint's sockets are being used, there will have to be a greater force to disconnect the member from the connector's socket. With this knowledge more improvements can be made to our design by changing the direction in which the members are oriented.