Constructing journal week 2

Constructing Environment Week 2 Journal

616221 Ng Weng Teng, Venus

This week’s reading of Ching covered about loads on the building, both internal and external. Besides, it has talked about the structural force which is about how object change in shape and the movement of body due to the applied force. These can also be related to the understanding of the way that columns and beams supporting weights. In the workshop of this week, we are asked to build a tower same as the previous week. However, the material is changed from blocks to pieces of cut balsa wood.

Our concept of the tower is to build with a triangular shape base. At the side view is a rectangle in shape. It continues to build up by using the shape of triangles and rectangles.

Joints are being stick by glue, this kind of joint can be counted as the surface connector. However, it is not strong enough that some of the joints keep on breaking. The tower is three levels high, but it isn’t strong enough to stand. Therefore, we have taken the concept of truss.

Truss is a kind of structural frame base on the shape of triangle. The force is acted on the nodes in a form of tension or compassion. Here are some examples of truss:

The top of the truss is usually in compression while the bottom is in tension. The beam inside is called the web which help to transmit forces to the bottom chord of a truss to strengthen the construction.

We try to add this concept into the tower by making a diagonal to the rectangles.

In such a way, the tower is strong enough to suppor the compression by the upper chord and enable it to stand.

The final outlook of the tower.

The tower is slightly lean on one side. The reason is that the right side is missing the diagonal inside the rectangles. As a result, it is weaker and tend to support lesser pressure.

When it comes to testing the strength of the tower, we try to add stress to it. However, the joints are too weak that they break immediately.

Compare with the other group in the studio, their joints are strong enough to support the force. The joints did not break instead the pieces of wood break. Referring to the whole activity, it can be clearly shown different kind of joints can result in a totally different consequence. Also, the structural fram eof truss is very important to strengthen the force supported by the construction.