E-Portfolio Reflection
Earthquakes are prominent natural disasters that can greatly damage the lives of people who are subject to its destruction. Earthquakes can not only physically harm people, but also puts many homes and other essential infrastructure at risk of collapsing and breaking. This has, as expected, devastating effects on the surrounding community. Damage can take years to build while using many resources that may not be available in certain areas. An example of this could be the Nepal earthquake in 2015. With a magnitude of 7.6 on the Richter Scale, this earthquake killed 8,964 people, injured 21,92 and left about 3.5 million people with homes. Ven two years after the earthquake, less than 5% of all of the destroyed homes were able to be rebuilt, still leaving 800,000 families in temporary shelters.
In areas that are subject to the most earthquakes and those of the highest power, buildings should be constructed in such a way that limits the damage that can be done otherwise. I not, we put at risk the lives of millions during these earthquakes. Houses that can be built with fewer resources (to minimise environmental impact and overall cost) but can resist tremors are necessary to mean that less damage will be done. This results in fewer people’s lives being majorly disadvantaged by poor infrastructure that earthquakes can destroy.
Our task is to build a structure that is able to resist the pressure of the tremors that an earthquake produces, simulated in the classroom with a shake board. As multiple different types of seismic waves are produced from an earthquake, we will be simulating p, s and surface waves. The first wave is the p-wave, which is the fasted (at 10km/hr), is a longitudinal wave and does the least damage to structures. The second wave to be experienced is the s-waves, which travels at about 5km/hr, has a transverse wave and does moderate damage to structures. Finally, there are surface waves. They are the slowest (travelling at 4km/hr), are similar to ocean waves in their motions and does the most damage to structures. If the structure is not able to withstand all of these waves, for 10 seconds each, then it has not effectively completed the task.
As well as making sure our design can stay standing when experiencing seismic waves, there are other criteria it must follow too. This includes –
- The structure has a minimum height of 60cm
- The base is no larger than 30 by 30cm
- The very top of the structure has a platform that is at least 5 by 5cm
- The building is only made from spaghetti and blu-tack
- The building must be under $60 (with each strand of spaghetti or gram of blu-tack worth $1)
The first part of this task was to take part in a 50-minute design sprint with your other group members. This was used to help boost our creativity and give us a starting point on what can work and what may not. Everyone went into this sprint blind, unaware of any proper designs that are used to create stable buildings.
When this was finished, we ended up with a design that spread outwards the higher it became and was unable to meet the height or the 5 by 5cm platform on top. From this, we learnt that we needed to ensure that we use our given resources more effectively and research methods that may be useful in earthquake-resistant buildings.
After this design sprint, we went on to research new designs for our final building. When researching, we found two different ideas that we wished to utilise in our final design. This includes cross-bracings and viscus dampers (which would be slightly larger amounts of blu-tack at the base of the building) replicated from the San Francisco tower. We also wanted to have ‘cables’ attached to the side of the building that connected to the ground, similar to that of a building designed by Kengo Kuma, which supports the upper parts of the structure and helps to distribute pressure from seismic forces.
We then began to design what we wanted our final structure to look like. We decided to have 3 cube platforms as the external structure, three square-based pyramids as the internal structure (partially utilising cross-bracings through how it interacts with external spaghetti) and spaghetti attached to the base to support the 2nd platform. This idea was meant to be both supported and flexible while meeting all of the requirements. We decided to spend $40 on spaghetti and $20 on blu-tack.
However, when we began building, we ran into some problems. The square-based pyramid as the internal structure was strong, as expected, however, the cube surrounding it wasn’t. Despite this, we found that when this cube collapsed in on itself (creating a shape that overlapped each other and the internal spaghetti) it was relatively stable. Then, we used the cables to connect each of these corners to the base. This was extremely sturdy and didn’t break or move slightly under any of the forces. But, because we had not planned for this build, we were unsure how to continue to build upwards.
At first, we tried to replicate the same collapsing and then building a pyramid technique again, but we found that didn’t work as we were unable to attach the corned to the base to stabilise it (which caused it to be very wobbly).
Instead, we built a pyramid from the supported corned, while building an upside-down pyramid from the base of the bottom one (as originally planned). We connected these to each other and the base. However, due to the lack of planning we, unfortunately, ran out of materials and had not yet reached the required height. we were at 45cm when the required height was 60cm (15cm off). We also didn’t keep within the $60 budget, requesting two more stands of spaghetti in replacement to the fragments of the ones we had broken while handling the structure. However, we were able to fill all other requirements, but overall, our build was unsuccessful.
Our building did withstand all the waves, perhaps showing that it was somewhat stable, however, when surface waves struck some of the spaghetti fell off (partially affecting others). This did not cause the entire building to collapse though. The building was able to distribute the pressure of the seismic forces, but there was a flaw in the top of the design that caused it to partially break.
Perhaps if we had dedicated more of our budget towards the spaghetti, and less towards blu-tack (which we could have used much less of), we would have been given enough resources to continue to build upwards.
From this, I have learnt that designs that may work well in theory, won’t necessarily be successful when applied under specific conditions. Perhaps, next time, we should have spent less time designing and more time hand on understanding how to work with the given materials and requirements, giving room for us to tweak and change the design as we go.