Thirteen teams of students and young engineers from Birmingham and Coventry University, Arup, Aecom, Mott MacDonald and Amey competed in this year's competition which took place at Birmingham University on 2nd March.
The brief was to design and construct a tower crane out of drinking straws in two hours. In addition the model was to satisfy a minimum vertical clearance of 300mm and 200mm horizontally and could only be constructed using plastic drinking straws, Blu-Tack, Sellotape, cotton string and a pair of scissors.
All teams had 10mins to produce initial concept sketches of their proposed design to demonstrate an appreciation of the structural form and geometry.
The completed structures were load tested. As one of the key judging criteria was based on strength-to-weight ratio, teams which constructed their structures from bundled straws had a very low load carrying capacity to self-weight ratio and hence received low scores. All models failed by overturning. Despite the fact that some teams had appreciated overturning as the principal mode of failure
The Birmingham University team 'Aspire', were victorious with the highest ratio of failure load to self weight.
Ramin Akhyani, the event organiser and participant said: 'There was a clear demonstration of the spirit of teamwork during the competition, the task demanded sound engineering judgment and critical thinking. It was fascinating to see students from all three universities with graduate members meet at a single point to come out with sound structural engineering solutions.'