Construction club
Department of Civil Engineering
Eastern Mediterranean University
STRONGEST MACARONI TRUSS COMPETITION
Design and build your own truss using macaroni
Learning Objectives

To create a design method.

Group work and discussion.

Building techniques that civil engineers use
Materials List

(Weight =750 grams ) of dry spaghetti

Glue gun

Glue sticks, 1 package

Sand

Large tub (or newspapers to spread out), to make clean-up easier

2 tables (place 45 cm apart)

chain (to hold the weights)
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
Given: Steel chain and a steel hook, screwed into a small piece of wood for loading the structure at its
mid span,
THE RULES
Participants will be from Civil Engineering Department Undegraduate students. Teams must be four
persons for CIVL 100 and a maximum of three persons for the rest of the department students. The
top three teams will be recieving an award certificate for the stongest buit truss. Registration forms
and related documents will be collected from construction club Evaluation will be based on the
scoring below. The competion will take place in Civil Engineering Week on 11th of May, at the outer
back side of the civil enigeering department building. All teams should register for the competion
through the registration form that can be found in the civil page website. After filling up the form,
the form should be submitted to Mr. Amin riazi in room CE 141 by the deadline 5th of May.
SIMULATION OF TRUSS WITH MACARONI
1) The truss manufactured should be made of ordinary macaroni with an optional dimension.
2) The members of truss should be made out of only macaroni, without being reinforced with
paste or any other material.
3) For loading, the truss should be placed on two supports, with a distance of exactly 45cm
between supports.
4) Selection of form, height, and changes of height along the span are at the discretion of the
designer.
5) The structure presented should be composed of two main trusses on each side, distance of
which is exactly 15cm at the support. But it is not necessary to keep such a distance
throughout the height of the structure, AGAIN it should start out as 15cm at the supports.
6) The dimension of the joints, made with paste should not exceed 2.5cm.
7) The loading will be at the middle of the bridge (mid span), it’s up to the designer to design
according to that.
8) For attaching the load there are two possibilities and it is the choice of the designer to choose
between the two.
a) First approach the load can be hung onto a support constructed by the designer right
on the middle of the bridge (mid span).
b) Second approach is to have two supports that are 2cm apart from each other right in
the middle of the bridge, that will support a piece of wood that has a hook fixed to it,
which will be used to carry the given load.
Note: these options are all based on the design of the truss.
9) Taking necessary measures to prevent the trusses falling apart during loading will be upon the
designer.
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SCORING:
1) Ratio of load tolerated to the weight of truss [ 85 points ]
2) Calculation and a brief summary of the choice of design, must be presented at the day of the
competition. [ 15 points ]
Truss presentation shall include the following cases:
a) The initial plan and its optimization procedure until achieving the final plan, together
with photographs and reasons for selecting the related plan [3 points].
b) Determination of mechanical specifications of macaroni [3 points].
c) Results of manual or computer analysis [4 points].
d) Estimation of the amount of load, the truss will be able to carry [3 points].
e) Estimation of the possible location of failure of the truss [2 points].
f) Any extra information that needs to be mentioned to the judges [-]
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NOTE:
The evaluating judges are: Dr. Serhan Şensoy, Dr. Mürüde Çelikağ, Dr. Umut Yıldırım, and Dr. Giray
Özay.
Any truss having highest proportion of load tolerated to the weight of the load, will receive a score of
85 and the other trusses will receive lower scores in proportion. But, all the trusses can obtain a
score of 15 out of their presentation.
In the day of the completion if any of the rules aren’t fit to a structure, the
structure’s team will be disqualified.
For any related questions, application forms or a copy of the rules, please contact
Construcion Club members.
Construction club email: constructionclubemu@gmail.com
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