Science and Engineering Faculty (SEF)

2016

EGB121 Engineering Mechanics

Semester 2 2016: Design Project
This entire project is worth 30% of your overall assessment for this unit.
The design project report contributes 20%, and the laboratories contribute 10%.

1 Project Outline
Your team have been engaged to investigate the failure of an engineering structure and
propose a suitable re-design. The re-design will be checked for its conformity to the
given specifications. The design report should include a critical review of the analysis,
design calculations and experimental results obtained from laboratory exercises. It is
also a requirement that the design report conform to the format given in the provided
style guide.

1.1 Group Formation

Groups will consist of five students, and are to be formed on Blackboard via the Groups
tab. Group members will need to be finalised by 5pm Friday week 4 (19th August).
After this time, all remaining students yet to join a group will be randomly allocated to a
group.
If there are concerns regarding your team or its members, bring them to the attention of
your tutor as soon as possible; do not wait until week 12.

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Science and Engineering Faculty (SEF)

2016

2 Design Problem
You are part of the graduate team at Trusst Me Engineers. As their name would suggest,
they specialise in trusses. Your team have been asked as an independent consultant to
investigate a truss structure whose permanent deflection under load is higher than the
allowable specification.
The structure of concern is a cantilevered, glass-based mountain lookout recently
commissioned by the local council. The council, wishing to recoup the costs for a
defective structure, wishes to demonstrait without a doubt that the original lookout
design was flawed this is the purpose of your consultation.
The lookout, intended only for pedestrian access, has a length of 15 m and a base of 3.5
m. Figure 1 below shows the basic truss structure which has a height of 1 m and
consists of six evenly spaced truss sections. The lookout is constructed from two
identical and parallel trusses. The decking of the truss is of transparent glass with a
mass of 115 kg/m2.

Figure 1: Schematic of truss structure, pre-failure

All truss members are made of C250L0 (AS/NZS 1163 - Cold-formed structural steel
hollow sections) circular hollow steel sections which has the properties as shown below
in Table 1.
Table 1: Truss member properties

Yield Strength

250 MPa

Tensile Strength

320 MPa

Density

8050 kg/m3

Mean Radius

0.07 m

Thickness

EGB121 Project Brief

0.0035 m

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Science and Engineering Faculty (SEF)

2016

It is predicted that the permanent deformation occurred during the grand opening of
the lookout At the peak of this, video records show that there were 10 people located at
the end of the truss, and a further 40 people mingling on the deck (approximately
evenly distributed).

3 Report
3.1 Failure Report
You need to explain the failure of the truss using engineering principles. This should
take the form of a well presented report (neat, legible, handwritten calculations are
fine) which states your findings in a simple, clear and concise manner. As the
information provided by your onsite team is limited, be sure to state all assumptions
made in your failure report. Your client (the council) has experienced civil engineers
who will know if your report is erroneous.

3.2 Materials Testing Discussion

Your client (wishing to avoid further faults) has asked you to conduct some testing of
potential materials for a new truss (see Section 3.3). Your client is particularity
interested in the values of Youngs modulus, yield stress and ultimate tensile stress of
potential materials to be used to construct a new structure. Your client would like to
see how these values have been determined, found from your tensile testing laboratory,
and linked to the findings of your report. It is likely that your team members will be
undertaking the laboratories separately, and the client would like to see the multiple
sets of data compared between each other and compared to published values. Any
calculations or sketches can be included in the appendix.

3.3 Design
There is an opportunity for you to acquire another fee from this project by presenting
the council with a truss design that will not fail as the previous structure did under a
similar loading. If you can efficiently design this new truss and present it to them, then
the job (and fee) is in the bag.
This new truss must be of the same basic dimensions (length, width) and must be
designed to fit to the already constructed supports You must provide a design and
material specification for the new truss structure. The client wishes you to design your
structure utilising one of the materials which was tested during your lab sessions. All
assumptions and design decisions must be included and justified using engineering
principles. This is very important because your design report may be admissible in
court if another failure occurs.

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Science and Engineering Faculty (SEF)

2016

Your design must also be cost efficient, where using less materials for the construction
of the structure is considered to be roughly equivalent to lower costs. Evidence of this
optimisation should be included as part of your design discussion.

4 Assessment Criteria
See the CRA sheet provided on Blackboard for the breakdown of how your project
report will be marked. It is important to ensure you read the CRA sheet carefully.
A formative self and peer evaluation will be conducted in week 8, to give you and your
group an indication on how each group member is contributing. A summative
evaluation will be conducted at the end of semester to ensure fair distribution of marks
between group members based on each members contribution. If it is evident that a
group members contribution to the project is insufficient, their project mark will be
reduced accordingly. Groups will be required to submit minutes from team meetings,
submitted as an appendix. It is expected that a minimum of five quality sets of minutes
are submitted.

5 Milestones
Support sessions will be held in weeks 4, 7, 10 and 13 with teaching staff available to
provide assistance with elements of the project as follows:
Week
4

Milestone Details
Clarification and project description details, and checking group
formation. Groups members to show their timeline and each members
roles.
Group formation via Blackboard due Friday (19th August) by 5pm.

Initial project design and calculations.

10

Project design verification of calculations.

Feedback on project report writing, formatting etc.

12

Final report submission due Wednesday (19th October) by 5pm via

SafeAssign group submission tool on Blackboard (your file must be a
PDF).

You will be advised of the days, times and rooms for these support sessions. Use these
milestones as a guide to track your recommended progress throughout the semester.

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