2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Engineering Statics is one of the fundamental classes for nearly all engineering students, who usually take this class at an early stage in their career development. It is crucial to add hands-on experiments to this course not only to better understand the mechanics concepts and theories, but also to help them become active learners. The bridge experiment is a classical Lab class for learning engineering statics using truss analysis. Commercial bridge modeling kits are typically used in this experiment. However assembling and recording data is inefficient in motivating students to learn the concepts of static equilibrium and truss analysis. This paper presents a design project incorporating a conventional bridge experiment using the Pasco Bridge set ME-6991. In addition to recording the tension/compression values of the truss members, the students were asked to optimize the member dimensions and produce them using 3D printing, replace the optimized truss members, and record the performance. The design and manufacturing processes enhance the learning of truss analysis. The integration of this design project, the assessment method, the background of the students, and student feedback are presented in this paper.