STEM stories: Dennis Bazan and Alyssa Dhalla

Each year the Bridge to Engineering Success at Tufts (BEST) program welcomes a new cohort of students from groups underrepresented in STEM fields. Over the course of their undergraduate career, the BEST program provides a comprehensive, thriving environment for the students to support their personal and academic growth. BEST operates through the Center for STEM Diversity (CSD) at Tufts in conjunction with the Office of Undergraduate Admissions and the School of Engineering, and is led by CSD Associate Director Sehba Hasan.

This series highlights the work that BEST students are doing at Tufts. 

For their Structural Analysis Class (CEE22), BEST participants Dennis Bazan and Alyssa Dhalla (both E24) were tasked with designing a 20-inch long bridge that would withstand a downward load of 200 pounds and a lateral load of 20 pounds. Given limited materials, they decided to create a 20x2.5x7 inch truss bridge out of basswood. They ran preliminary designs of truss bridges on the software SAP2000 to estimate the performance and how much compressive and tensile stress each member of the bridge could hold. By evaluating the tradeoff between strength, efficiency, and aesthetics, the bridge's final design was minimalist in style but complex in member and joint design. The team performed various calculations on the final design to verify the expected outcome such as calculating the area of joining overlap, determining global and local buckling, and working out the number of materials needed for construction. In the end, their bridge withstood a load of approximately 207 pounds.