Twelve engineering student one bridge

  Phillip Curley a third year engineering student stands with the bridge his group built for the Department of Agriculture and Forestry and the 2012 Design Expo at UPEI.(Bo Ford photo)

 

By Bo Ford

Twelve UPEI engineering students have created a portable bridge to help farmers and wood lot owners.

The students were paired up with the Department of Agriculture and Forestry as part of a project for the 2012 Design Expo held yesterday at UPEI.

Currently the Department of Agriculture and Forestry has streams all over P.E.I. It is a fine if a person drives a tractor or ATV across them. This has caused people to create permanent infrastructure.

The permanent infrastructure has started to affect the water levels in the stream and it stops fish travel.

The Department asked the students to build a quickly deployable and quickly removable bridge, because it has to be taken out during the high flood seasons.

Phillip Curley, is the head behind the students who built the bridge. He said the bridge has been made with hydraulics that are attached to a tractor.

“What that means is the bridge can be picked up with a tractor, but not only that. Your tractor can actually drive away with it. Not only can a tractor drive over it but it also deploys it.”

This makes the concept very easy for laying the bridge over a stream driving and driving over it.

Lyle Gauthier worked on the project with his group said the fact the tractor hauls it and drives over it make it effective.

“You can leave it over the stream after you drive over it, then at the end of the day after you go back, you can simply deploy it and take it back.”

Curley said the group was given two hours for the bridge to be deployed and extracted.

“We can do it in about seven minutes, so were pretty satisfied with it.”

  The group pitched three ideas, a trailer that backed up and flipped over, an accordion idea and a simple bed frame

“We took the idea of the accordion and we tried to make it as much into the trailer thing,” said Curley.

“We realized through the use of hydraulics and the fact it’s for a tractor. The idea just evolved to say, to say why don’t we just hook it directly up to the tractor and use its own hydraulics.”

Curley explained the group got lucky in their situation; one of the group’s members has a father that is a welder.

“We did all our own welding, but we did have him there to supervise.”
The project now goes to the Department of Agriculture, they then make sure the math is correct and the bridge is safe before distributing it around the Island.

Curley said the group doesn’t receive any money for the creation.

“We receive the benefit of doing the project,” joked Curley.

The group was given a $1000 budget from the Department to complete the project and they clocked in around $920.

The bridge is not built to normal size. If it was built to normal size it would cost about $2500.

The group members explained the main idea was to keep it around the $2000 fine, so there would be more of a benefit for people to build or buy one of these bridges.

“It took us about nine hours of work to do it, but if we were to do it again, it would only take about half the time,” said Gauthier.

The Department has already sent members out to check out the bridge the group has built.

“They are actually coming back with a group of wood land owners, to see if they would be interested in it,” said Curley.

The bridge was constructed by Curley, Gauthier, Tyler Bernard, Andrew Walsh, Abdullah Abdullsalam, Christian Chatham, Dawson MacMillan, Dylan McIssac, Edward Lush, Evan Getson, Matthew Tong and Nico Verhoeven

Five other projects were entered in the contest. The UPEI Design Expo Award is the one all the groups are hoping on. The award is handed out to the group who produced the best product as voted on by Engineers P.E.I.

“Everybody’s chance is pretty good, you never know. I feel pretty solid,” said Curley.

Two of the other projects were teamed with the P.E.I. Bag Company to make there company more efficient. One with Ducks Unlimited to help restore the wetland in Johnston’s River. The other two groups were paired with Morning Star Fisheries to make a grading table and another to help tank circulation.