Faraz Iqbal | Mechanical Engineer

The student team was presented with a challenge to design a 57-inch truss made of drinking straws with the ultimate goal of being able to hold the largest possible load without buckling while also accurately predicting the load at which the truss would buckle. The design process began with conducting tests to collect data regarding the compressive and tensile strengths of the straws and performing uncertainty analysis on the data. This data was then used to write a MATLAB simulation that would output results on various truss designs. These designs were first created purely based on intuition and basic statics knowledge. The truss designs were inputted into the MATLAB simulation, and the results from the simulation were used to select the best design and further optimize it. This selected design was then built, tested, and rated relative to the other student teams in the course.

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This project was completed in my sophomore year at Boston University for my statics course. The biggest challenge that was presented here was to be able to calculate the uncertainty of the data that was used to run the simulations. The team learned a lot about working with empirical data, and when to know that the results of the simulation can be trusted and when it cannot. In the end, my team was able to successfully optimize the truss such that it held the second highest weight with the lowest difference in predicted buckling weight versus actual buckling weight in the entire class.