Material Selection for Building a Pedestrian Bridge - A Tensile Testing and MATLAB Analysis

VICTORIA UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF ENGINEERING
VEN1104 PROBLEM SOLVING FOR ENGINEERS
MATERIAL TO BUILD A PEDESTRIAN BRIDGE
PRESENTE BY
STUDENT’S NAME:
REGISTRATION NUMBER:
DATE:

INTRODUCTION
 In this report, the correct material to build a foot bridge across the Yarra River is
evaluate and determined. For a safe working bridge, the strength exceeds 9kN/m.
MATLAB programming is used to evaluate data in determining the best material to
construct the bridge.
 Tensile testing of materials enables engineers to predict how different materials will
behave under various loading conditions hence helping in making the right material
choice or a particular application [2]. Tensile testing provide data that is used to
determine limiting loading values that a particular structure can withstand without
failures. The key design properties provided are yield strength, ultimate strength and
Young’s modulus [1].
 The properties of a material after tensile testing are determined from a stress-strain
curve shown in figure 1.

Figure 1: Stress-strain curve of a material

OBJECTIVES
 To evaluate through testing and determine the correct material to build a safe
pedestrian bridge across the Yarra River in Melbourne
 To understand the basic mechanisms of engineering data analysis and the use
of software like MATLAB to develop algorithms and codes for engineering
applications