Bridge Types Load Paths Lab Blender 5.2

One river, four ways to cross it: a steel beam, a stone arch, a steel truss and a suspension bridge, all 60 m between supports and loaded by the same moving vehicle. Drag to orbit, wheel or pinch to zoom, right-drag to pan. Stress colours show stress divided by the allowable value; over-limit loads show as numbers above 100 %.

Presets

Moving load

Vehicle Traffic

Vehicle mass

Position along the bridge (0 = left support, 60 = right support)

Speed

Each bridge carries the same vehicle at the same position. Axle loads are applied as point loads; no impact factor.

Selected bridge

Display

Colours show

Deflection exaggeration (vehicle effect only; drawn deflection is capped at about 1.2 m)

Stress colours Support forces Labels

Light

Graphs

Peak utilisation of each bridge as the vehicle crosses (dead load + this vehicle)

Mid-span deflection caused by the vehicle (mm)

Internal action along the selected bridge

Experiment: how deep should a cable sag?

Question: for the same deck load, what do a deeper cable sag d/L and a taller tower do to the cable force, and does the textbook formula H = wL²/(8d) agree with a numerical cable? The numerical cable integrates y'' = (w + μ√(1+y'²))/H with RK4 and solves for H so that the sag at the tower equals d, including the cable's own weight.

Click a table row to set the 3D bridge to that sag.

Numerical checks

The science