Structural Earthquake Stability Competition 5.0 (SES-V)

| 17 March 2019 |

written on March 19, 2022

After 1 year, I had the opportunity to take part in the SES competition again. I still felt the same excitement and anticipation as the first time I joined. The only difference was that the team members were completely different from the last time. This time, SES-V became more challenging than SES 2018. In addition to building a tower model, we also needed to prepare a single page A2 size poster and present our design concept on the day of competition. Moreover, more loads were applied to the structural model.

Overview of SES-V

Structural Earthquake Stability 5.0 (SES-V) was a competition of designing and constructing a building model, which aimed to resist the simulated earthquakes generated by the shaking table. Similar to SES 2018, it was organised by the Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) Student Chapters of The Institution of Engineers Malaysia (IEM) and the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), in collaboration with Lee Kong Chain Faculty of Engineering and Science’s (LKC FES) Department of Civil Engineering. Again, this event was sponsored by Sunway Construction Group Berhad. It was held at UTAR Sungai Long Campus on 17 March 2019.

The objectives of the competition were to promote the study of earthquake engineering among undergraduate students and provide civil engineering undergraduate students with an opportunity to work on a hands-on project designing and constructing a cost-effective frame building to resist seismic loading.

SES-V saw the participation of 18 local and private higher learning institutions with a total number of 32 participating teams. The participating teams were from Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahaman (UTAR), Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM), Universiti Malaysia Perlis (UniMAP), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP), Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia (UTHM), University of Malaya (UM), UCSI University, Heriot-Watt University Malaysia, University of Nottingham Malaysia, INTI International University, SEGI University, Manipal International University (MIU) and three polytechnics, namely Politeknik Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah, Politeknik Sultan Azlan Shah and Politeknik Sultan Idris Shah.

The theme of SES-V competition was “Constructing a High-Rise Mixed Commercial and Residential Building” with the assigned building features that comprised an apartment and shopping mall. On the day of competition, each team of 3-5 undergraduate students was given 3.5 hours to construct and design a building model using the materials provided by the organiser. Upon the completion of model construction, the models were tested on the shaking table. The artificial earthquakes with various intensities were generated. There were a total of 7 levels that will be tested and the testing duration for each level was 45 seconds.

The materials and tools provided by the organiser on the day of competition were shown as below:

13 x Balsa wood

(3 x 3 x 1000mm)

1 x Mounting board

(A2 size)

1 x Structure base

(280 x 260 x 10mm)

2 x Super glue
(20gm)

1 x Sandpaper

(A4 size)

Unlike before, different sets of weights will be placed on the structures in SES-V according to different ranges of areas built. Commercial floor had 3 categories of loading sets and the same went for the residential floor. The lightest loading weight to be placed on the commercial floor was 600 g, while the heaviest loading weight was 1000 g. On the other hand, the lightest loading weight to be applied to the residential floor was 900 g, while the heaviest loading weight was 1700 g. The weight of loadings varies according to the area of the building. The larger the area, the more loads will be placed on the structural model. If any team violated the rules and regulations, penalty of additional loads will be charged based on the violation of rules.

A new regulation has been introduced in SES-V, that was, each participating team was required to bring along one A2 size poster and present the concept of their designed model on the day of competition. The presentation commenced with the model construction simultaneously. Only one member from each team was allowed to deliver the presentation to the judges within 4 minutes.

Feature of the Model

Model specifications

A complete structure must consist of at least 2 levels of commercial floor, 5 levels of residential floor and the top 3 floors must consist of the balcony with the beam, column and slab.
Residential Floor should have more than 4 edges/sides/faces.
Commercial Floor should have more than 3 edges/ sides/ faces.
The shape of the balcony must have at least 4 edges.
The base of the model must be within 20 cm × 20 cm square.
The minimum floor area for each of the commercial floors is 225 cm2 while each of the residential floors is 64 cm2.
The subsequent area of each commercial floor must not be smaller than the commercial ground floor while the subsequent area of each residential floor must not be smaller than the first residential floor.
The minimum floor height for commercial ground floor and commercial first floor is 16 cm and 8 cm respectively while each of the residential floors is 8 cm.
Setback is required for the residential floor. Each floor area of the residential floors should not be larger than 30% of the area of each commercial floor.
The total floor height of the commercial floor must be equal or less than 37.50% of the total model height while the residential floor must be equal or larger than 62.50% of the total model height.

My Story

Our team was named Alpha and consisted of 5 members from Year 2, 3 and 4 students. This time, the difficulties of the competition can say to be totally different from the previous one because more regulations of model features needed to be considered. Besides that, we had to include our structural design concept and the concept of seismic resistance in our poster and present it on the day of competition. This was quite challenging for us.

Before competition

There were countless designs about the shape, dimension and area of our tower model, especially for the residential floor. The aspects that we have to consider included:

the edges of residential floor, commercial floor and balcony
areas of commercial and residential floors (as it will decide the loadings weight during testing)
the floor height for residential and commercial floors

After numerous discussions, we decided to propose 6 edges of residential floor, 4 edges of commercial floor and 4 edges of balcony in order to meet the requirements set by the organiser while considering the limited balsa woods used. For the floor height for residential and commercial floors, we decided to follow the minimum requirements. The area of commercial floor was 225 cm2 whereas the area of residential floor was 64.32 cm2. The percentage of floor area of the residential floor to commercial floor was 28.60%. The other challenges we faced were the setback and the design of transfer floor. We spent a long time discussing and finalising our ideas.

In the practice of tower model building, the whole progress was considered to be relatively smooth. Thanks to the past experience, so we knew how to assign our tasks properly and what mistakes to avoid during the model construction. For instance, the method of cutting and sanding the balsa woods. These past experiences helped a lot during our practice.

In this competition, we have analysed our tower model using SAP2000. This was my first time getting into this software. However, I was not in charge of analysing the model but I was tasked with drawing the details of our tower model using AutoCAD.

We departed from Perlis to Sungai Long the day before the competition. Again, the long journey with 6 hours. Many thanks to our lecturers for driving us.

The day of competition

There were 16 teams in zone A and 16 teams in zone B. Our team was the second team in zone B. After the opening ceremony and short briefing, the competition began. This time, cost and time efficiency were one of the judging criteria. So instead of just finishing in time, our goal was to complete our tower model as quickly as possible. I was tasked with cutting the balsa woods and constructing the residential floors with balconies. Since one of our team members had to present our design concept to the judges during the model construction process, our progress was slowed down by the lack of help from one member. Nevertheless, we completed our tower model before the last 5 minutes. It might not be as good as we expected, but it's better than not getting it done in time.

Since the area of our model just met the minimum requirement, hence the loads applied to our tower model were the lightest among the load set categories. The total weight of loadings applied to the commercial floor was 600 g while the residential floor was 900 g. During the test, the hall was filled with mixed emotion as team members watched the live feed of their models being tested. The winner was judged based on the stability of structure, cost and time efficiency, and presentation. Our tower model finally managed to sustain up to level 5. Same result as the last competition I joined.

Through this competition, I learned a lot from the other participants especially their creativity in designing their tower models. The most memorable part for me was that some of the tower models didn't have the transfer floor design. Transfer floor design was the most concerned issue in our discussion as it would cost more usage of balsa woods. This competition taught me to always think out of the box and enhanced my soft skills as well.

Team ALPHA

unit: cm

Photo

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posted on March 20, 2022 | 14:42 PM

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