After last year's lecture-accompanying exercise had to be cancelled due to the pandemic, the students were fortunately able to build a paper bridge in this year's lecture "Konstruktion und Material" (Design and Materials) of the Institute of Construction Materials (IWB) of the faculty.
In designing a paper bridge that was at least 70 cm long, yet light and slender, the budding engineers were allowed to give free rein to their creativity in the course of the lecture and, with the help of the knowledge they had acquired, to construct a bridge in accordance with the boundary conditions specified by the IWB.
The work was done in groups, which had to come up with a concept as well as model the bridge on their own. In addition to A4 paper, the students were only allowed to use a glue stick or liquid glue, but not adhesive tape as a means of connection. In addition, the dead weight of the bridge could not exceed 500 g and had to withstand a load of 5 kg as a prerequisite for passing the preliminary test.
The presentation and testing of the bridges took place as part of a lecture and not only amazed the students. The result of the bridges showed a variety of bridge constructions, including very stiff paper rolls and special folding techniques.
The frame bridge, which had a dead weight of 466 g, caused a sensation among all participants. This was because the test loads piled up by Prof. Garrecht were nowhere near sufficient to test the maximum load-bearing capacity of the bridge. A student volunteered to act as a ballast, and the paper bridge itself withstood a load of 53 kg without cracking or tearing.
It's amazing what can be done with paper using the knowledge acquired.
Way to go young engineers!
