Week 2 journal entry

Constructing Environments ENVS10003Cheng Wei Lydia Chen 641119

Week 2 Journal

Week 2 Tower Building

In week 2, we had thin wooden strips to build a tower with.

Because of the fragility of the material, my group first

decided that a post and beam structure would be

appropriate.

We began with a wide footing, wide enough to support its

height, but not too wide as we are aiming for height and had

limited strips.However when we began

sticking the posts onto the ends of the base, it became

extremely unstable, so we decided to cross the two posts

over with a pin joint in the middle, like a truss, to gain

more stability.

Week 2 Tower Building

We decided to follow the structure of a truss- with ends

connected at joints and straight lines creating triangular units.

After building the second level with having the cross on the

other two ends of the square, we found that it will still

unstable. The initial thought was to add crosses so all four

ends of the square are supported. However, because

of the limited number of strips, we decided to go with a point

load in the middle .It was obvious that the load

was bending the post outwards as force compresses down the

post.

Week 2 Tower Building

This is the end result of our tower.

We had enough strips to build three layers, with supporting

beams on the bottom two layers.

For the top, we wanted to

achieve the maximum height, so we leaned two posts

together to create the tip of the tower.

Week 2 Tower Building- Applying Weight

It can be seen that as weight was applied, our tower collapsed with firstly the joints, and secondly near the pin.I think the force was applied heavily on the crossed sections as they were where the two poles met and relied on to support the next layer. The joints with the poles and the square broke I think because the tips of the strips were simply too much thinned out, and didn’t have enough surface to support the frame.