A bridge is generally used to overcome traffic or barriers safely in a certain location. Given the high demand of bike traffic in recent years, a bridge that has the function of ensuring steady and safe bikes traffic is required in many locations. The bridge can ensure conflict free flow for bikes over a river, another bridge, junction, intersections or roundabouts. A pedestrian pathway is usually integrated within the bikes bridge serving the same purpose for pedestrian also, considering both users have relatively limited loads demand.

Ontological development

The design started by developing an ontological model in the domain of bikes bridge, resulting in design options for mainly a cable-stayed bridge to be designed in later stages. The following picture describes the hierarchy as well as some relations of the components in an abstract model.

The .owl file for the ontology can be found here.

3D Modelling

After comprehending the parameters and main components of the bridge, a parametric model was developed using Blender that geometrically describes the components and visually characterize its parameters.  Alternatives were generated based on different boundary conditions and structural properties of the bridge. The following 3D view shows an example of one of the alternatives for a cable-stayed bikes bridge.

The blender model can be downloaded here.