Structural simulator

Bridge Collapse

A real 2-D truss solved by the method of joints - axial forces, Euler buckling, and a genuine (not scripted) Verlet collapse. The identical 10 m Warren span that snaps in balsa is shrugged off by ASTM A36 steel. Flip the material and play the failure.

How to read it: each member is colored by what it carries - blue in tension, amber in compression, red when it fails (utilisation eta reaches 1.0). Line weight tracks force magnitude.

Member material

frame 0 / 30 - t=0.000 s

Legend

tension compression failed (eta >= 1.0) joint / support

The model

4-panel Warren truss, span 10 m, height 2.2 m, 6 cm TallRect members, a 2 kN load at each interior bottom joint. Values are the real solver output, not a shape drawn by hand.

This diagram is drawn from the deterministic solver output. Enable JavaScript to render the truss and play the collapse.

eta = utilisation = axial force divided by member capacity. For compression members the capacity is the smaller of material crush strength and the Euler critical buckling load P_cr = pi^2 EI / (KL)^2.