Author Archives: Chilli Wilson

It should be noted that the materials to be implemented in our bridge  design would be steel for the piers, pre-cast reinforced concrete elements for the bridge and steel tension cables connecting the piers to the bridge (see pictures of Day 4).

It is well known that steel is a material that performs especially well in tension therefore the decision to use that as tension cables. The thinking behind the use of concrete for our  walkway, was that the bridge would be under a heavy traffic flow, as many University students will be using this bridge as a safer way to traverse either side of Lewes road to connect the Moulscoomb campus of the University of Brighton. With such heavy demand, it was decided a dense and solid material for our bridge was needed and reinforced concrete became our material of choice.

The first day saw the each of our members converge as a group; me, Chris, Tracey, Lewis and Maisie after we had converge as a group we were briefed on our task for the week: To design and produced a scale model of a cyclist/pedestrian  bridge, that connected the east side of Lewes Road to the west side thus connecting the whole of the Moulscoomb  campus of the University of Brighton.

After we had a lecture on the different constructions of bridges, such as truss bridges, cable-stay bridges,etc, we had a site visit to the entrance of Mithras house which illustrated the height difference from the entrance of Mithras house to Lewes road:

On the way towards Mithras house I noticed the the amount of trees and other protected structures such as cameras and traffic lights, which meant that our bridge piers and location would be dictated by the location of these structures.

This identified the design parameters set up for our group to design a bridge to fit the brief in Day 2.

On day five, we were instructed  that we were presenting our bridge design in the drawing studio.

Even though we were told that presenting would commence at 11AM, our group arrived at 9AM, enabling us to apply any finishing details to the model. After I had printed off an A1 print of our poster, we transported the chipboard base which held our different scale-models.

With the topography of the site completed in day three, me and Chris could complete constructing the 1:1000 scale model of our sky walk.

Once the 1:1000 scale model was built we could focus on fabricating a 1:200 model of a section of the walkway :

However, upon construction we discovered that the length of the walkway between the two piers is too long to be supported sufficiently, it would require a steel truss  that is so large that a 5.7m of minimum road clearance would not be possible with this design.

To combat this problem a column, double the height of the piers at 24m, was offset to the bridge with tension wires to support the middle of the bridge:

With the 1:200 model fabricated we could now focus on the 1:50 scale model of our detail of our design, this model illustrated the joint between the walkway and the “pod” pier and highlights the prefabricated nature of our design:

With these three models created we could now focus the morning of day five on practising what each individual will present in our presentation.

As stated in the last Blog post, with the dimensions of our design  calculated, we could commence work on constructing  the model of our bridge. Once we had convened as a group, we set about to the heavy engineering wing to create a scale model of our design.

Once there, me and the Hazelwick students were tasked with translating the topographical information we had gather from in front of Mithras house:

This had to follow an A1 1:1000 map of the site we had printed off the day before:

Once the topography in front of Mithras house had been successfully rendered in to the model-space we set about constructing Mithras House, Watts building and Cockroft building. The erection of these buildings in the model space enabled our sky-walk to be viewed in context within the Moulsecoomb campus.

With the completion of these buildings and the topography, we could commence constructing our model of the bridge at scale 1:1000,  a close-up model of the walkway at scale 1:200 and a 1:50 scale model of a the joint between a walkway and a “pod”, where the walkways converge.

Yesterday saw the formation of our team and the identification of our outlines as stated in the brief.

Today saw us visually communicate our initial ideas for our bridge design through the use of sketches:

As stated in the brief, we must create a bridge that links university buildings either side of the Lewes Road, therefore, we deiced initially to design a bridge that resembled the shape of a algebraic “X”. This design consisted of a central pod with two sets of bowed walkways connecting the pod to either side of Lewes Road. The advantage of having two separate pathways on either side of the road meant that local residents and other members of the public could use the bridge not just University of Brighton Students.

However, we decided that to achieve a more effective linking with the university buildings, expansion of this core idea was needed to fulfil this aim:

By enabling access to not just Preston Barracks, but Watts Building, the Heavy Engineering development and Cockroft building, we had achieved this goal.

But doing this meant that we had to manipulate and extended our original “X” shape, with the inclusion of long, straight pathways and the inclusion of numerous support columns :

With the bridge design finalised,  dimensions of the bridge could be calculated:

With the dimensions of our bridge calculated we can start building a scale model of our bridge and compiling our presentation, in Day 3.