American Society of Mechanical Engineers Design Competition · April 2025
High-Strength Tower
Mission
Given limited materials and time, design and build a tower, optimizing for height, in order to hold a set weight.
Highlights
- Used engineering statics and finite element concepts to create a truss-structure based tower.
- Built a complex structure out of plastic and adhesive within the time constraints.
- Tested incrementally during construction to catch failures early.
Role
- Designed the tower and its substructures, and assigned build tasks to run in parallel across the team.
- Led iterative testing, applying incrementally greater loads to structure as construction proceeded.
Results
- Greatest load-bearing tower, holding three times the minimum load.
- A few centimeters behind the leading tower, securing a second place position.
- Named the most engineering-sound structure at the event: it carried the initial load without visible deflection.