Author Archives: Ashwaq Alabdi

Over all it was a good week, stressful though. With every project there is always hurdels which need to be over come. No project is easy.

I felt like this week has taught me a lot especially with the role of team leader, it gave me responsibilities; to ensure that everything is going smoothly. I would like to say that I took on that role very well.

The good and The bad 

we got through the week as a team and managed to get everything ready by deadline. The time management lacked as we wasted abit of time during the beginning of the week. However, I feel like I organised the weeks task to meet our deadline very well even though some team mates needed a push but we got there in the end.

I feel like the presentation didn’t go as well as we hoped as we lacked in preparation for it. But you win some, you lose some. It gave us an idea and experience of how to present, as this for myself was my first ever presentation. Watching everyone else present gave me some pointers for the future. I feel like I’ve gained new skills from this project; mainly working in a team of people whom I wouldn’t have put myself with, and seeing as I’m a control freak I felt like I did a good job.

Overall a good week, Group 2 😛

The day has finally come… Presentation day.

Day 5 is the last day of the project this is where we presented our models and poster and discuss our ideas to the class and lecturers. presentation started at 11am but my group came in at 9am to finish up any last minute touch ups like spray painting the model and placing it on the board.

Ir hit 11am and we started to present to the class.

The Final model | Detailed Section| Poster

The Python Bridge, Netherlands

Python Bridge, officially known as High Bridge, is a bridge that spans the canal between Sporenburg and Borneo Island in Eastern Docklands, Amsterdam. It was built in 2001 and won the International Footbridge Award in 2002. The bright red bridge spans 90 meters and was designed by Adriaan Geuze of the architectural firm West 8.

Akashi Kaikyo Bridge, Japan.

Akashi Kaikyō Bridge, Japan

The Akashi bridge is a suspension bridge, which links the city of Kobe on the Japanese mainland of Honshu to Iwaya on Awaji island. It has the longest central span of any suspension bridge in the world, at 1,991 metres.

These bridges contributed to our design; with the Truss elements. You can see some similarity with our final model.

The Final idea…

It took us after a few sketches and idea developments to design our final idea. We gathered information about Truss bridges and how they work and support the loads in different situations.

Images below show how the load is distributed through a Truss bridge. This is where we got our main design idea as we thought it was the most suitable.

Load Distribution on Truss bridges

Truss bridge| Load Distribution

Also after looking at precedent studies we have two bridges (see blog on precedent studies) that connect to our final design as thats were we got the ideas of the final idea.

Over View sketch of the levels and ramps to our bridge.

The image above shows  a rough guideline on how the bridge is design and the different levels and the measurements of the bridge.

Final model : scale 1:150

Taking our ideas and being able to produce and demonstrate it in a model. This is our final model.

Measurements | 1:1 | 

Length: 65m | Width: 8m (5m footpath, 3m structure)|

Height: 5.5m( lewes road), 6.5m (above Mithras car park), 7m (entrance of Mithras)

Continuing from day 3, as all the materials were cut to scale all we had to do was start constructing the bridge. Although we thought it would be easy, it did take us all day to construct the bridge.

Construction process.

Near to the end of the day I thought to refer back to the brief and see what else is asked from us, and that was when I noticed that we also had to construct a detailed model of our bridge. So I grabbed a pencil and paper and started sketching out a detailed section and adding measurements to scale, therefore I can pass it on to one of my team members to just follow what Ive sketched and construct the detailed section without any trouble.

Detailed section | scale 1:10

By the end of the day our model was done and so was our detailed section but we didn’t have time to spray paint our model to give it that steel look effect, so we decided to all come in the next morning early for any last minute touch ups.

Day 3 came round the corner quicker than we expected.

The aim of the day was to start constructing our bridge, however we had a slight hiccup as we were one man down as one of the Hazelwick students wasn’t part of the project no more. Therefore, that meant we had to step our game and crack on with our day as it had a lot of work load.

Tasks-

~ Measure materials and cut to the correct scale. In this case we had the scale 1:150

~ Sketch up a detailed drawing of the final design

~ Start building the bridge

~ Start working on the poster

Taking control as team leader, I set each individual with their own tasks such as :

~ 2 members cutting the materials to scale

~ 1 member was assigned to draw the detailed sketches as his drawing skills are amazing.

~ 2 members dealing with the poster

Materials cut down to scale, ready for assembling

However, plans just didn’t go to plan. My team didn’t use there time efficiently as some tasks took longer than needed which gave us a set back and we wasn’t able to start constructing on day 3. which meant we had no time to waste and we had to put pressure on ourselves to get it done on time.

The aim of day 2 was to come up with a final design from the development from our initial ideas.

We spent a couple hours just doing some rough sketches and discussing our ideas.
The Hazelwick students were not in for this day, however they wanted to contribute to the final design; which is why I set up a group chat via whatsapp so we have a way to communicate and keep them in the loop and send pictures of the work they produced.

Rough initial ideas

Initial idea, sketched by Joel (hazel wick student)

Another sketch by Joel

After hours of bouncing ideas, we came up with a final design, location of the bridge and also decided on the scale of which we wanted to make the model.

it was a productive day. 😀

First day of the week we was given the brief of the assignment. The design week was combined with a sixth form college and there were assigned to be apart of this design week but they were only in 3 days of the week.
On the arrival of the college students they were assigned a group and in my team we had 3 university students including myself and 3 college students.

We had our first group meeting once we were allocated into groups; we introduced ourselves and went over the Brief to get an idea of what is asked from us.

After the break, we headed out to site to get an idea of what were working with and come with with different ideas on where we should locate our bridge.

After the afternoon lecture, we had another group meeting just bouncing ideas of where it should be located and also ideas of any designs.

As group leader, I gave each team member tasks to do at home and to bring it in for the next day.

Tasks included –
~ precedent studies
~ initial ideas
~ reviewing digimap
~ gathering material

The Menai bridge is a suspension bridge to carry road traffic between the island of Anglesey and the mainland of wales.

Designer ~ Thomas Telford
Location ~ Northwales
Materials ~ Wrought iron and stone
Contruction time ~ 7 years, 1819-1826

Dimensions

Total Length ~ 417 Meters
Width ~ 12 Meters
Height ~ 30 Meters