FORUM

Design and Construction of the Longest Rope-Stayed Newspaper Foot-Bridge

Anita Rao
4th Year B.Tech, Civil Engineering Dept., IIT Madras, Chennai 600036, Tamil Nadu, India. E-mail: anita_a_rao@yahoo.co.uk

Introduction
Shaastra is the annual technical festival at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras in which engineering students of all disciplines from all over India participate to compete and collaborate in many technical events. As a part of Shaastra 2002, the students of IIT-Madras decided to construct something that had never been built before. The main idea was to build a record-establishing structure, involving a large number of students. After some contemplation, it was decided that the project should be in the eld of structural engineering, and utilizing an unconventional, largely bio-degradable material. A high-rise tower, crane, a large geodesic dome, a swing, and a bridge were some of the initial ideas. Although each idea was distinct, they all had in common the use of ecofriendly and unconventional material. The idea of a paper footbridge was selected, because such a structure had never been built on such a large scale. Moreover, the students were impressed by the very idea of walking over a paper bridge. The design, material testing, fabrication, and erection of the footbridge was completed during Shaastra 2002. It was a great learning experience for all the students involved. This paper intends to share the excitement and fun of designing and constructing a footbridge made of unconventional and ecofriendly materials. As far as we know, this is also the longest and tallest bridge to have been built of this kind, using such unconventional materials.

taking tension were pretensioned, so that they are under tension at all times. If the ropes that are to take tension are not taut, then large deections will occur in the structure before they become effective. This could also lead to geometric instability and structural failure. The lateral stability of the entire system was ensured by means of the horizontal curvature in the ropes supporting the deck elements, as shown in Fig. 1 and an A-frame conguration of the towers. The challenge was to develop concepts for all phases of construction that would involve as many people as possible in the making of the bridge. Therefore, the design required repeatable basic units that could be produced on a mass scale.

Material Characterization
Because both the newspapers and the manila ropes were unconventional materials, various tests had to be performed to obtain their material properties, such as Youngs modulus, maximum tensile strength, creep, and relaxation behavior. Newspaper Properties Eighteen sheets of newspaper were glued together. These sheets were then cut to obtain the shape shown in Fig. 2. The 11.5 by 11 cm rectangle was stiffened at the ends with cardboard to avoid local failure at the end grip points during the test. The two ends were held in the jaws of a universal testing machine, and the tension was applied using load control. The thickness of 18 sheets of newspaper was 1.24 mm and was measured prior to the test to an accuracy of 0.02 mm by

Conceptual Design
Having decided that a bridge made entirely out of newspaper and cotton rope would be built, it was further decided to adopt a cable-stayed system because of the elegance of the solution and the efciency in load transfer such a system offered. The aesthetically pleasing appearance of such a design also inuenced the decision. All components of the rope-stayed system are mainly in tension or compression Fig. 1. The load on the deck of the bridge is taken up as tension in the stays. These stays are pretensioned against a walkway deck-level rope. As these stays are supported on top of the towers, the horizontal component of the tension in the stays is self-equilibrated, and the vertical component of this tension is transmitted as a compressive force onto the tower. Therefore, all members are in tension or compression with little induced bending, except in the deck unit. The towers and deck units were to be made essentially of newspapers. All members

Fig. 1. Cable-stayed bridge conguration

112 / JOURNAL OF PROFESSIONAL ISSUES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION AND PRACTICE ASCE / APRIL 2006

two towers. In the longitudinal direction, the tops of the towers were to be held in position by stay ropes. Thus, the towers had to be designed to carry compressive force from the stay cables and transfer it to the ground support. The bridge was to carry a load of one man. The compressive force on the tower would be larger than the gravity load components of the self-weight of the stays, decks, and the mans weight due to pretensioning of members. It was decided to design each leg of the tower A-frame to carry a compressive force of 200 kg at the preliminary stage. With a factor of safety of 1.5, the legs had to sustain a compressive force of 300 kg before failure. Hollow Pipe Column Concept for the Tower Initially, each leg of the tower was to be made up of a large diameter pipe section built up by gluing paper in a spiral shape. The preliminary dimensions of the pipe section were to be 140 mm in diameter and 8 mm thick. These dimensions took into account material failure, overall buckling failure of a 4-m-long member, and local buckling failure as a cylindrical shell. It was decided to fabricate and test a pipe made of newspaper sheets that were about 750 by 550 mm. A steel pipe 3 m in length and 140 mm in diameter was used as a mandrel. Five students working synchronously made the paper tube, one applying glue on sheets of newspaper, two winding the sheets onto the pipe in a spiral, one handing the pasted sheets to these two, and another rotating the pipe when required. Spiraling was done to avoid formation of critical joints. After one layer was completed, the same process was repeated from the other end; this time the paper was wound in the opposite direction. This was done to avoid unraveling of paper under compression, which would occur if paper were to be spiraled in the same direction. A total of 30 layers of sheets were wound over the pipe to make the pipe wall 8 mm thick. The steel pipe, with sheets of paper glued on, was left overnight to dry. The next day the steel pipe was removed and the hollow paper tube was tested. The tube failed by buckling locally at points where glue application was insufcient. The drawbacks of this method were that It took a long time for the glue to harden. A few patches on the sheets that were left unglued acted as weak points, causing the member to fail at these points. These patches rendered the member weak because the layers of paper were not acting together as a single unit. It was highly uneconomical to use so much glue. The team of ve took nearly 6 h to complete one column. The work was monotonous and could not involve more people. The skill required was high, because the spiral formation and gluing had to be uniform. Therefore, this approach was abandoned. One of the aims of this event was to involve as many students as possible. It was necessary to make the elements using newspapers from some basic repetitive units so that they could be mass-produced as well as involving a number of students with minimal supervision and quality control requirements.

Fig. 2. Mechanical properties of newspaper. a specimen; and b stress-strain curve

means of a vernier caliper. The Youngs modulus of the paper was taken to be 1,000 MPa, and the tensile strength obtained was 11 MPa. Rope Properties The ultimate strength of the rope was found by suspending weights in increments of 10 kg until failure. The various ropes tested were ordinary jute rope, 6.5-mm-diameter manila rope, and 8.5-mm-diameter manila rope. It was found that the failure loads of each rope on the average were 30 kg for ordinary jute rope, 150 kg for 6.5-mm-diameter manila rope, and 200 kg for 8.5-mm-diameter manila rope. The Youngs modulus of the rope was taken to be that of cotton ber, or 300 N / mm2. Relaxation is the phenomenon of the decrease in stress at a constant strain over time. Pretension applied to the stays initially should not be lost with time. Therefore, various ropes were tested for their ability to carry pretension without relaxation. Each rope was held taut between two xed supports and pretensioned by means of pencils used as tourniquets. These pencils were twisted along with the rope to achieve a uniform degree of tension in all test specimens. After 24 h, the degree of relaxation was measured by plucking each rope. It was found that the degree of relaxation in jute rope was higher compared to manila rope of the same diameter. Therefore, it was decided that all tension units would be made of manila rope.

Triangular Lattice Tower Concept Preliminary Design

Tower An arrangement of two legs supported at the ground and joined together at the top to form an A-frame was chosen for each of the A solid roll of paper 750 mm long was made by rolling 45 sheets of newspaper lengthwise. The diameter of this unit, when tightly rolled, was around 60 mm. This unit was tested in compression over a length of 700 mm, and its ultimate strength in compression was 150 kg. The unit was also subjected to a two-

JOURNAL OF PROFESSIONAL ISSUES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION AND PRACTICE ASCE / APRIL 2006 / 113

Fig. 3. Elements and joints in the lattice paper column

point-load at 40 mm apart bending test over a span of 60 mm. The unit failed at a load of 25 kg. The unit had sufcient compressive strength but very low exural strength. Moreover, the self-weight of the structure would increase tremendously if a solid member was used for the entire height of the tower. The restricted length of each element length of one newspaper was also a drawback of this idea. In spite of these problems, it was decided to adopt this solid member as the basic unit because of its ease of mass production and having very few quality control requirements. The lattice tower was made using this basic unit. The units involved in the lattice column Fig. 3 are the following: Main membermade of 45 sheets of rolled up newspaper having an outer diameter of 60 mm; Horizontal membersmade of 25 sheets of rolled up newspaper having an outer diameter 35 mm, interconnecting the three corner units horizontally in compression with a 6.5-mmdiameter cotton rope connecting the three corner legs in tension; and Diagonalswere 6.5-mm-diameter manila ropes forming x-bracings that are pretensioned. The distance between corner legs of the tower was calculated so that the overall buckling strength of the column was greater than 150 kg with a safety factor of 2.0. The main leg members transfer the compression by bearing on top of each other. Tensile forces were transferred by means of pretensioned cotton ropes tying together two leg members at the joints, as shown in Fig. 3a. Any lateral sliding that could occur between the members at the two joints was prevented by providing a paper sleeve consisting of 30 sheets of rolled-up newspaper and taping them in position.

Horizontal Struts Horizontal struts were placed at the joints between consecutive legs and connected to the legs by means of tape. Manila ropes that were tightly tied around the triangle formed by the compression struts held the legs together in tension Fig. 3. Pretensioned diagonal x-bracings on each of the three faces between parallel corner legs and horizontal ties helped to hold and make the corner legs act together by transferring shear at any section Fig. 3. Fabrication of Columns Making of one unit of a corner leg member involved two people. One would roll the sheets of newspaper tightly while the other would feed in ve sheets at a time Fig. 4a. The rolling was done on a at surface. The newspapers used were of equal length 710 mm to ensure uniformity. Forty-ve sheets of rolled newspaper constituted the main corner leg members in the main panel of the lattice tower. After rolls were formed, they were passed through a quality check. Rolls were graded A, B, and C, etc. based on their compactness and uniformity. Grades C and below were rejected. Grade A rolls were used for the columns. The two ends of the Grade A rolls were sawed by means of an electric rotor saw to obtain a good contact surface for bearing and had a uniform lengths of 700 mm Fig. 4b. Two units were attached to each other by means of a paper sleeve. At a distance of 50 mm from the joint, holes were drilled on either side. Manila rope 6.5 mm in diameter was passed through these holes and tied together Fig. 3a. They were then pretensioned using pencils as tourniquets. Seven units joined together in this way comprised one corner leg of the column. Once

114 / JOURNAL OF PROFESSIONAL ISSUES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION AND PRACTICE ASCE / APRIL 2006

Fig. 5. Deck assembly

tied on the rope to eliminate slippage. After the diagonals were tied, all the diagonal ropes were pretensioned. This was done in the x-diagonals for all faces and the seven panels of the leg to ensure that no skewing of the column occurred during pretensioning. If the two diagonals forming the X in any face were not of equal length, the amount of pretensioning was adjusted. The rst 5-m-long lattice column was tested to failure in the structural engineering laboratory to gauge its behavior and strength. For this column, the diagonals were made using ordinary jute rope; no horizontal tension ties were provided at the joints, and the diagonal ropes were not pretensioned. As a result, the column failed by buckling at a load of just 80 kg. Based on all the shortcomings observed in the rst test, another column was fabricated, as described earlier, with all the renements and subjected to nondestructive loading. This second unit with rectications was tested to see if it could withstand the design load of 150 kg without any distress. In addition to the proof-tested column, three more columns were fabricated along the same lines to obtain two columns for each tower.

Fabrication of the Deck

Deck Unit The deck surface had to be supported on the two curved pretensioned ropes Fig. 1. It was found that the basic unit 45 sheet roll had very low exural strength and could carry only 25 kg. This could be improved either by increasing the diameter of the unit or by reducing its effective span by pretensioned rope Fig. 5. Increasing the diameter would mean a tremendous increase in weight. Moreover, maintaining a standard unit 45-sheet roll for ease of mass production was desirable. Therefore, an alternative of reducing the effective span was chosen. Two equally spaced props, stayed by ropes as shown in Fig. 5, were used to reduce the span of the deck member. The units were made of 25 sheets of rolled-up newspaper cut to 350 mm. The manila ropes were pretensioned. One deck unit, when tested, could easily withstand a load of 100 kg. To make the deck unit holes were drilled at the two ends of each prop after it was sawed to the required 350 mm. Two holes were also drilled at the ends of the basic unit. The props were then tied to the main member to form the two triangles shown in Fig. 5. These props were then stayed by a set of two 6.5 mm ropes running through drilled holes on the main member and the props Fig. 5. Knots were tied before and after every hole to prevent slippage.

Fig. 4. a Rolling of corner units; b nishing ends of corner leg units; and c lattice column testing

three legs were ready, a group would start making the column. Two legs were placed side by side, and horizontal struts were connected at all the joints and the two ends by means of tape. The third leg was placed on top of the triangle formed by these struts and taped in position to form a triangular shape. A 6.5-mm-thick manila rope was used to tie all three legs together at the level of the horizontal struts Fig. 3 to take tension. Holes were drilled at the joints to enable tying of the diagonal ropes. Initially, the 6.5 mm ropes were passed through the drilled holes in each panel on all of the three faces. Before and after every hole, knots were

JOURNAL OF PROFESSIONAL ISSUES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION AND PRACTICE ASCE / APRIL 2006 / 115

Fig. 7. Cap plate details

Fig. 6. Base plate detail

Finite-Element Analysis
Finite-element modeling and analysis of the bridge was carried out to understand its behavior, to work out the appropriate inclination of the towers from the vertical, to calculate the pretension in all the stay cables to avoid excessive deformation of the deck under load, and to arrive at the length of all the ropes and coordinates of the attachment points before pretensioning. MSC-NASTRAN was used for modeling and analysis. Beam elements were used to model the tower legs, and truss elements were used to model all stay ropes and deck level ropes. Temperature changes in the stay ropes were used to create desired pretension. Analysis was carried out under combined pretension, and a deck load of 75 kg was used to study forces on all the members. The rope pretensions were adjusted such that all of them stayed in tension during the entire process of placing the 75 kg load on the deck. The stays of the ropes were designed to ensure that there was a safety factor of at least 2.0 against their tensile strength, and the tower had a safety factor of 3.0 against overall and individual member buckling strength.

These consisted of two equilateral triangular plywood plates arranged one on top of the other. The bottom plate was tied to the roller using 6.5 mm cotton ropes through holes drilled in the triangular plate. On the top plate, three circular holes were cut to receive the three corner legs of the column. Two diametrically opposite holes were drilled adjacent to the circular cut holes to tie the column legs to the plate. Spacer pieces were used below the corner legs to transfer the force to the bottom plate and to serve as the distance pieces between the two plates. Nuts and bolts were used to hold the two plates in position. Thus, the base plate could be adjusted to hold the two columns of the tower in position at the desired inclination to achieve the A-shape of the tower. Four such base plates were used to support the four legs of the two towers. Two legs of each tower were connected to the casuarina roller, which was perpendicular to the centerline of the bridge.

Cap Plate
Two 18-mm-thick equilateral triangular plywood pieces bolted together were used as the cap plate to transfer the rope forces to the tower legs and to join the two legs together to form the A tower Fig. 7. The bottom of the two plates had three circular holes to receive the column legs and to transfer the leg forces to the top plate. Two diametrically opposite holes were drilled around each circle to enable the tying of the column corner legs to the base plate using 6.5 mm ropes. A circular hole was cut through the center of both plates to pass the stay ropes. A 25 mm steel rod was attached to the top plate by means of nuts and U-bolts. The stay ropes were tied to the rod and passed through the central hole in the cap plate, later to be tied to the deck rope. The two cap plates at the column top were tied together to form the A-frame.

Erecting the Bridge at the Site

Site Preparation The place where the tower legs were to be supported was marked on the ground. To avoid bending moments at the supports, the columns were to be hinged at the base and not xed. For this purpose, casuarinas wood cylinders about 100 mm in diameter were used as rollers. A semicircular cavity was dug to provide good seating for the rollers Fig. 6 and to transfer the vertical and horizontal thrust. Twenty-ve mm steel rod anchors 2 m long were driven into the ground at locations where the ropes from the tower and the deck were to be tied.

Stays and Deck-Level Ropes

The lengths of the stay ropes before pretensioning were obtained from nite-element analysis. These lengths were marked on the stays with a leeway of 10 cm for the knot that would be formed on the steel rod at the top of the tower. One end of the rope would connect to the deck-level rope between the towers; the other end would connect to the deck-level rope outside the towers. Each

Base Plate
Eighteen-mm-thick plywood base plates were used to transfer the forces from the three legs of the tower to the rollers Fig. 6.

116 / JOURNAL OF PROFESSIONAL ISSUES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION AND PRACTICE ASCE / APRIL 2006

Fig. 9. Student walking over the bridge

Fig. 8. Sectional elevation of the bridge

ensured a horizontal curvature in the deck-level ropes. The stays were then attached to the premarked lengths, to achieve the calculated pretension and the desired vertical curvature in the decklevel ropes. Slight adjustments were made to achieve the desired tension and curvature. The deck members were fabricated concurrently. These units were placed on and tied to the deck-level ropes. Fig. 9 shows the constructed bridge.

rope was tagged to identify it during erection. The lengths of each rope were marked. There were two pairs of ropes at deck level to pretension the stay cables against as well as to support the deck units on each side. Each deck-level rope consisted of a pair of 8.5 mm diameter manila ropes. The stay rope attachment points and anchor points obtained from nite-element analysis were marked on the decklevel ropes. After marking, the two deck-level ropes were tied together using 6.5 mm rope at every mark. This was to enable tying of the stays to the deck-level rope. Each wooden roller support was kept on top of the two plywood base plates that support the three legs of the columns and are tied to them by using 6.5 mm ropes. They were then placed in the semicircular trench created at the locations marked on the ground. The stays were tied to the bar on the cap plate. The cap plates were then tted to the top ends of the columns and tied to them. The cap plates of the two columns to form the A-frame were brought together and attached by tying ropes through the holes drilled on the abutting edges of the top plate. The tower was then hoisted slowly and placed on the base plate such that the three corner legs in each column t its respective base plate. The legs were tied to the base plate using the 6.5 mm ropes passing through the top base plate. Spacer pieces between the top and bottom units of the base plate gave support vertically from below the legs. Two stays from the top of each column were anchored temporarily to the ground to ensure stability of the towers during construction, and allowing adjustment of the inclination of the tower to the desired slope. To enhance the stability of the tower, a horizontal strut was attached to the two legs of the tower just below the deck level, and vertical x-bracing was provided between the two columns of the tower below the deck level Fig. 8 With the towers in place, the deck-level ropes were anchored at their ends, and the stays were tied to their respective marks on the deck-level rope. Horizontal ropes acting as ties between the deck level ropes were then put in place. The exact lengths of these ties were obtained from nite-element analysis. These tie lengths

Testing
After the paper rope bridge was ready and before anyone was allowed to walk over it, it was tested to see if it could withstand the load of one man. One student held on to the deck-level ropes from below, and pulled himself up, thus subjecting the bridge to a center-point load of one person. The bridge could easily resist this load without any visible distress. After this, many students had the pleasure of walking over the rst cotton rope stayed pedestrian bridge supported on towers made of newspapers.

Summary
The entire exercise illustrated many lessons learned to the students involved in the project: The process of designing, testing the constituent materials, fabricating, and erecting a unique structure made of unconventional material; The challenges in executing the project and the process of collaborative work to achieve the goal; The need to innovate, analyze, and make decisions to solve small and large problems; and The pleasure of seeing ones effort take shape and the dream becoming a reality.

Acknowledgments
We thank Professor V. Kalyanaraman, Dr. Devdas Menon, and Dr. Satish Kumar of the Civil Engineering Department for helping in the design of the bridge and completion of the event, as well as Ashish Gupta and Y. Aswani Kumar, 4th year B.Tech, Civil Engineer, IIT M for modeling the structure using nite-element analysis.

JOURNAL OF PROFESSIONAL ISSUES IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION AND PRACTICE ASCE / APRIL 2006 / 117