Integrated Educational Project of Theoretical, Experimental, and Computational Analyses

This research demonstrates how to design an integrated capstone project by including theoretical, experimental and computational analyses of a truss bridge. The project mainly focused on leading students to approach engineering problems with various methods and to understand the advantages and disadvantages of each method. The students applied three methods to acquire the values of stresses and deflections of members in the given truss bridge. First, they calculated the stresses and deformations theoretically. Second, they actually conducted an experiment of the truss bridge with electronic measuring equipment. Lastly, they built two simulation models with Autodesk Inventor and Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks. From the comparisons of above three methods, students were guided to the validation of assumptions of theories.