triangulator wrote:What design would u recommend? simple or trianglular?? also, if triangular, how would u support the bolt?
And one more thing: r u guys div B, C, or grad? This is my first boomilever stuff, but it seems that with the stuff u guys r saying im okay at it.
in my opinion, this is like 50% easier than towers.
To clarify, I'm in Division C, but I competed in Boomilever 4-5 years ago when I was in Division B. The difference between div B and C was fairly standard. Div B had 5 cm of extra height to work with, one of the major factors in the strength of cantilever bridges.
When I competed, I only used the standard boomilever style, though that's probably because I've never seen what a triangular prism boomilever looks like. However, it does seem as though there are references to this design in the 2014 boomilever forums (haven't found pictures yet though).
Trying to compare the easiness of towers and boomilever is fairly trivial. Boomilever is much easier to construct as every joint is flat and flush 90 degrees unlike towers, where issues in construction will be the primary downfall.
However, as someone who enjoys designing more than the actual construction of structures, I have mixed opinions on both events.
Towers:
- All competitive towers basically look the exact same, so its really easy to start off with a good efficiency.
- The forces that act on a tower are extremely simple, so its extremely easy to calculate the forces on certain parts of the tower, making it extremely easy to modify designs with consistent increases in efficiency.
- long build time, around 5-6 hrs for this years competition, 3-4 hours for 2016-2017
- I typically only changed bracing patterns once I found the optimal measurements to barely pass the bonus circle and 8cm circle, so I only had to build one jig.
Boomilever
- Because boomilever does have a relatively more complex group of forces acting on it, it is much harder to come to a conclusive "optimal"
design, which results in people coming up with drastically different solutions and with different types of wood.
- I changed the general structure and measurements of the compression chord fairly frequently, so I had to make a new jig for each fundamentally different design. (On some designs I experimented with would thicker than 1/8 x 1/8)
- much simpler to construct, while proper construction techniques are crucial (joints), not as much effort is required to ensure a good build.
- definitely much less build time around 2-3 hrs for a competition boom
.