Smart Geometry Bridges: Development of Reconfigurable Meta structures for Adaptive Vibration and Load Control

Bridges in resource constricted settings like Katete Bridge in Mbarara,which has suffered structural failure since 2020 are vulnerable to excessive loading,deterioration and vibration problems that conventional remedies like added damping systems,added stiffness are too costly to sustain.This project will develop and test a lowcost mechanically reconfigurable scissor truss metastructure whose geometry and therefore stiffness and natural frequency can be manually adjusted without continous external power.A parametric finite element model will be built and validated against a 2.5m physical prototype fabricated from locally available mild steel sections,instrumented with a low-cost ESP 32 accelerometer data-acquisition system.This study will determine whether geometric reconfiguration alone can shift the fundamental natural frequency by atleast 25% offering an afforadable,fabricable alternative for adaptativevibration and load control in developing country infrastructure.