Earthquake Resistant Buildings: ePortfolio Reflection

Earthquakes cause approximately 20,000 deaths each year around the world. What can we do about this issue?

For this project, we were tasked to design a building from spaghetti and blutack which would withstand a simulated major earthquake. For the building to be considered a success, it must have:

• Been quick and easy to assemble
• Had a minimum height of 60 cm
• Had a maximum base of 30 cm x 30 cm
• Had a flat platform on the top level of at least 5 cm x 5 cm
• Remained standing after an earthquake, as simulated by shaking a table for 10 seconds
• Been constructed from the materials supplied by your teacher
• Costed less than $60 to build. This budget will be provided twice: once for the initial prototype, and once again for the second prototype.

We were only allowed to use spaghetti, blutack, the board we were given, scissors, and a ruler. The base of the building was allowed to be blutacked to the board beneath it, as long as it was within the 30 x 30 cm boundaries. The building created in the project aimed to be able to withstand p-waves, s-waves, and surface waves for a time period of at least 10 seconds without collapse, and ideally, without damage. In this way, this project ties closely to real world issues. When buildings collapse during an earthquake, the damage, deaths, injuries and long-lasting complications can wreak havoc on communities, which may potentially never recover to their original strength. An example of this is the 2015 Nepal earthquake. Even after two years, less than 5% of decimated homes have been rebuilt, resulting in around 800,000 families are still without homes. By learning about how we can engineer safer, more earthquake proof buildings, we can create a sounder society that will flourish.

An Overview of the Engineering Process

Our final building looked like this:

As can be seen in the image above, it wasn’t exactly the most aesthetically pleasing of structures. However, the overall outcome of the structure we created was fairly stable. This is not a structure which could be implemented in real life, however, by creating a strong base out of flimsy materials, we learnt that even if the top of the structure is not as firm as the base, this is not negative. In fact, the flexible top allowed to building to sway and not fall down because of rigidity. We began with a 50-minute design sprint, where we had no research under our belts, and from there, researched, created a plan, and finally, created the scale model. There was a vast difference of what we planned to build, and what we ended up creating. Of the conditions for success, the building met most of the criteria, with the exception of being too short. While the building remained standing for the full simulated earthquake, there was minor damage at the end of the surface waves, where one piece of spaghetti snapped and lead to a few more strands becoming slightly dislodged from the blutack, which you can watch in the video of the final test below.

To improve the outcomes of this engineering project, it would have been better to spend less time being indecisive on how to build upwards from a base that differed from the initial design plan, and instead focus more on experimenting with what would work. It also may have been positive to take into more account the materials we were using when designing a building plan. The plan that we designed would most likely have worked with more sturdy materials, however, with spaghetti and blutack, the plan could not be implemented. Overall, we communicated and collaborated effectively.

The initial design plan which in practice did not work.