Recent content by Gordy

I'm not sure what you mean by structural modes, but take in mind that this is a relatively short span (just decking, no trusses/etc.) so flexing/torsion along the length won't really be an issue. By frequency analyzer, do you mean a piece of hardware or software?

Right, but say that I also used a smoke wand + high-speed camera to observe the vortex street and measure the frequency. What I am asking is, would the forces be strong enough that I could match certain peaks in force to the observed frequency?

Or will I just end up with a squiggly-wiggly mess? (To speak in scientific terms)

So, let's say I have a bluff body in a moderate-speed wind environment, as in wind across the deck of a bridge. As the vortices form across its surface, do they apply alternating force to the structure? (Maybe I'm completely misunderstanding the nature of vortices)...

Right now, I'm thinking of mapping the airflow (by whatever "mapping" methods I can find) over the cross section of the empty bridge, then progressively imposing traffic (possibly moving, if I can find a way to do that) and observing the effects of the added bluff bodies. Sound decent? If...

I completely agree, I don't want to overextend myself in terms of just getting the model built; however, it seems like if I were to do something like smoke stacks (i.e. focusing more on the flow phenomena than on the structure itself), that would be creeping into fluid mechanics, an area in...

Fabulous, seriously (Good God, thank you Cyrus). Now, I have three possible directions to move (At least, that's how I see it): 1. Place multiple common types of bridge span in wind tunnel, observe how they interact with flow, and isolate features in each that contribute to stability. (Possibly...

Is that (propylene glycol) a road I can practically move down, or does it get really complex really quickly? And wouldn't the compression caused by the stream hitting the bridge components affect the air's density? All of the Schlieren imaging I have seen has been heated-based, so of course I'm...

A few hours of The Google has given me a thought: Investigating air flow over bridge structures using Schlieren photography. Feasible?

Once I can actually figure out a topic, I know that I'll enjoy moving forward with it, but this is just the most agonizing part.

And this is an area in which I really excel, so I'm just looking for a way to demonstrate it. Even just re-creating a previously done experiment would suffice (not plagiarism, of course, I'd specifically say that I was re-creating it)

Yes, this is exactly what I learned from my previous failure (oh, yeah, I can learn fluid mechanics in a couple months, I'll just work REAL hard. No, did not work.)

No, no specifications, just a research project with data gained from experimentation, they're pretty much the most broad guidelines humanly possible. Yes, I'm going to be presenting it, so I need a hypothesis. Seriously, it doesn't get much more broad than this. I'll take just about anything.

I know, I really don't need to see it again. The point is that it still isn't fully understood, so it's a possible working area for me. Does anyone else have suggestions?

*ahem* Anyways, I'm interested in possibly working on a project involving the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (the black-and-white video of the bridge that looks like it's made of rubber, everyone's seen it). http://www.ketchum.org/billah/Billah-Scanlan.pdf" attributes that flutter to a specific vortex...