So, I go to a charter school in Fort Smith and we have these internship opportunities out in the community and I am either trying to get into the AHTD or another civil engineering firm in the area. I am thinking ahead on what presentable I want and I thought of a life size scale model of an interchange I have seen since I've been in diapers. I am trying to figure out I scale to build in, because I want to have the section of the I-630 that meets Finanical Centre Parkway a enterable area and they would walk on part of the 630 to exit the presentation.
The exhibition's main focus would be centered around the cloverleaf-directional T stack interchange of the two Interstates.
Any thoughts?
Are you aware that "life size" means a one-to-one scale?
Quote from: TheArkansasRoadgeek on May 25, 2017, 12:45:00 AM
So, I go to a charter school in Fort Smith and we have these internship opportunities out in the community and I am either trying to get into the AHTD or another civil engineering firm in the area. I am thinking ahead on what presentable I want and I thought of a life size scale model of an interchange I have seen since I've been in diapers. I am trying to figure out I scale to build in, because I want to have the section of the I-630 that meets Finanical Centre Parkway a enterable area and they would walk on part of the 630 to exit the presentation.
The exhibition's main focus would be centered around the cloverleaf-directional T stack interchange of the two Interstates.
Any thoughts?
Have fun hauling
an entire fucking interchange around. :pan:
Actually reminds me of the stress testing I saw at Turner Fairbanks. Had an entire per-lane section of a curved bridge deck in one of their gigantic labs, ready to snap.
Let's do some math. (It sounds really sarcastic, but really the motivation is math being fun.)
If people are walking under a to-scale I-430/630 overcrossing, you'd need about 8 feet clearance vs. maybe 15 feet in real life? Then your model is about 2:1 scale. If you can make them crawl (4 feet), then your model is 4:1. The interchange is about 0.5 mile across (rough estimate from Google maps), so 1/4 of that is 660 feet; about 2 football fields.
If the entire interchange won't be walkable, but the I-630 overcrossing of S. Shackleford Road is? The overpass is 4 lanes + shoulders inside and out... looks like about 80 feet wide. Shrink that down to 4 feet wide (20:1) and your half-mile interchange is 132 feet long.
If you decide **** that, let's do HO scale: then 1/2 mile * 5280 feet * 1/87 = 30 feet and a few inches. Transport this in your 6-foot pickup truck, you'd have to tie a little red flag on the end, then you'd be OK :-)
TL;DR: interchanges are big :-)