Measurement and Analysis Final Project

Fall 2024

This is my final project for ME 4505 which was conducted as part of a group of 3. We were given the option to experimentally measure anything of interest to us, so my group chose to measure the motion of a notoriously bouncy pedestrian bridge at Northeastern. 

The question of whether or not the ISEC pedestrian bridge (PedX) moves has been a running debate since it was built a few years ago, some students swear it bounces significantly, while others claim to have never felt it. We tried to answer this question for our project. 

We chose to use an accelerometer given that they were available and suitable for the application. It would have otherwise been difficult to physically measure the motion of the bridge relative to the ground without building some large supporting structure. Even very precise laser rangefinders would struggle in this application as we required sub millimeter accuracy to reliably quantify the motion.