621338 KE DING (SARAH)
Week 2 constructing journal This week’s lecture and some parts of reading were focusing on the relationship between nature and the structural system. As the professor (Lecture) said, natural and manmade system references the structural system. Animal architectures uses different kinds of animal structures to think of the structure of different kinds of buildings, for example, the rabbit tortoise structure, as the rabbit has speed to run away from danger while the tortoise is protected by its shell, the tortoise cannot change its point of balance or centre of gravity, a point where all the weight can be considered to act. (W02 el03, 2013) As well as the plant architecture, the root of the plant is just like the base of the building, it has to be very stable and can be able to hold the whole structure. Through the reading, the most important concept is about the load and the force. The load can be separated into dead load (static load) or live load (dynamic load). As the dead load comprises the self-weight of the structure and the weight of building elements, such as the walls of the building, live load includes any moving or movable loads on a structure resulting from occupancy, snow and water are the examples of it. (Ching) Forces include collinear force, concurrent force, nonconcurrent force, moment and couple and so on, they all have different meanings and different ways to be work out. Pinned joints, fixed joints and roller joints are also mentioned in the reading. According to the tutorial, we used the balsawood to make another structural tower. To make the tower as strong as it could be, our team used three balsawood for the outer frame, it was not stable enough to stand on the ground which means the centre of gravity was not clear and we could not make sure if we have got the correct measurements for the branches. Therefore, we did connect the bottom together to make the triangle base. All triangle frames (truss) Triangle base to stand the tower
To make the tower stronger, we decided to make crosses between two balsawood. To make each joint be at the accurate place, measurements and calculates are quite important. Each side is formed as several triangles first. As long as all joints be taped together and well which the picture shown above, the other side’s of cross can be easily completed. Finally, as all crosses were completed, to hold something, a small holder which was expanded from the top balsawood structure was needed.
621338 KE DING (SARAH)
The holder
All crosses shape to strong the tower The place which was broken first
When we finally destroyed the tower to find out which part of the structure was weak, we found that the left corner at the bottom of the tower was broken first which meant that that part was still weak of the structure. However, the total structure of the tower was still strong than what we thought at first.