For this project we were tasked to build an earthquake resistant building made out of just spaghetti and blue-tack.
The project started of with a design sprint which we got 50 minutes to make a rapid build of our initial prototype. We then tested it to see if it could withstand s-waves and p-waves to resemble an earthquake simulation. We managed to finish most of the build but could of added more to the top, we weren’t effective with time but were effective with the build it self. It lasted all throughout the time it was shaken and was held up pretty well, the building did tend to twist as it it was shaken, and it didn’t fit the criteria for the length and budget, but was able to save by trading blue tack with spaghetti. After reflecting on out initial design we researched new ways to build a strong building and started designing our second prototype which ended up being our final one.
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Challenges
As we were building we faced many challenges. One of the challenges we faced were that out tower was leaning, due to the different lengths of spaghetti, this was a big problem since nothing could balance at the top of the tower, we tried to fix some lengths of the spaghetti but we were to late since the tower was already falling apart. To overcome these challenges we changed the length of spaghetti as we were building to make sure the building would lean more and to save materials.
Our building was able to withstand an 8 second earthquake with a maximum of a 2.2 magnitude and a minimum of 0.5 magnitude. This meant our prototype was not able stay up during a major earthquake (10 second earthquake).
Some things that were successful were that we met the minimum length of 60cm and were within the maximum base of 30cm x 30cm.
If I were to do this project again I would try and make the base of the tower bigger so it had more support and to make more reinforcements to help support the tower to make sure it doesn’t lean. Overall this project was a good experience on how real engineers make earthquake resistant buildings.