SRI LANKA INSTITUTE

OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

BRIDGEFEST ’ 22

Rules and Specifications

 Table of contents

01. Introduction

02. Objective

03. Materials

04. Dimensions

05. Deck

06. Loading and supports

07. Proposals and Designs

08. Evaluation

09. Judging
 01. INTRODUCTION

The Spaghetti Bridge competition which is known as Bridgefest is one of the main events
organized by ERIC, HES, and FEMC of the Faculty of Engineering at the Sri Lanka Institute of
Information Technology. This contest is open for all the Civil Engineering Undergraduates from
SLIIT, and in other state and Non-State Universities while it is compulsory for all the second year
civil students of SLIIT as it will be a part of their Continuous Assessment marks for the module of
Structural Analysis II.

The maximum number of members each group is allowed to have is five. The competition is
carried out as a live construction based on designs made prior to the competition day. There will
be two workshop sessions conducted based on the software analysis and techniques involved in
spaghetti bridge fabrication. The duration of the bridge fabrication would be strictly limited to 5
hours.

02. OBJECTIVE

• Providing knowledge on how materials like spaghetti could be correlated with Civil
Engineering applications, to the Undergraduates.
• Providing the opportunity for young Civil Engineering Undergraduates in order to apply
what studied to the real world.

03. MATERIALS

All the materials would be supplied by the organizing committee subject that the groups are
registered prior to the competition and paid. Also, Any group is not allowed to bring Spaghetti or
Glue sticks on their wish to fabricate or bond the bridge. Each group would be provided with 500g
(1 packet) of Spaghetti (#5 Grade) and 20 small Glue sticks. No additional Spaghetti or Glue
would be provided under any circumstances.

1
04. DIMENSIONS

The constructed bridge should comply with the limits given below.

• Span of the Bridge should be more than 600 mm.

• Maximum Vertical Depth of the bridge should be less than 300mm.
• For a bridge with a bottom chord, the Lowest point should not be more
than 100mm from the level of the provided supports. In such cases vertical
depth of the top and bottom chords too should be less than 250 mm.
• Width of the Bridge should be not more than 150mm.

The above specifications are shown in figures on the following page.

Figure 1 : detailed drawing 1 for bridge design

Figure 2 : detailed drawing 2 for bridge design

2
 • Glue can be applied only as rings and at Joints only while the minimum
distance between two glue rings should be 25mm.
• Weight of the Bridge should be less than 600g excluding the I section
Provided by the organizing committee.

Details on the application of glue are shown in the following figures.

Glue rings

Figure 3 : detailed about glue joints and applications

3
 05. Deck
A wooden block with the following dimensions (75mm x 75mm x 75mm) should be able to pass
through the bridge deck with no obstruction from one end to the other. Details are shown below.

Figure 4 : detailed the deck of the bridge structure

06. Loading and Supports

The supports of the bridge should be kept as follows and if the following order is not followed
bridge might get disqualified.

Figure 5: acceptable end support design

4
I section with the following dimensions would be provided to each group by the organizing
committee. No amendments would be made to the provided section under any requirement and
groups are supposed to build their bridges to meet the shape of the provided section. Provided
platform should be attached to the center of the bridge to enable loading at the midpoint of the
bridge.

Figure 6 : Application loading

The Plan View of the wooden I section that would be provided is shown below

Figure 7: Deck I section detailed drawing

5
 07. Proposals and Design
Groups are advised to submit their design and the specification of the bridge with analyzed
structure mentioning the nature (Tension/Compression) and the magnitude of each member.
Also, Each group is required to forecast the bearable load of their bridge and provide the
information to the organizing committee. All the groups are strongly advised to submit the required
7 details on or before the 25th of November at 12.00 p.m. through the link which will be sent
through email.

** Please note that it is compulsory to submit the project proposal before the given deadline to
get eligible for the event and awards.

08. Evaluation

Evaluation would be carried out by a Judge panel compromised of a combination of Senior

Lecturers in the Civil Engineering Department. And they would evaluate all the bridges based on
the following criteria. The award would be presented to the winner of the bridge competition, and
they will be the highest scorer from all the criteria

• Strength / (Weight of the bridge) ratio - 70 %

• Efficiency of the Design - 10 %

• Neatness and Cleanliness - 10 %

• Time Consumption - 5%

• Load Forecast - 5%

Description of each criterion,

Strength / (Weight of the bridge) ratio - This is simply the ratio between the ultimate
load bridge could hold at the verge of failure.

6
 The efficiency of the Design - Under this criteria Judge panel would check whether the
nature of the failure (Tension / Compression) as mentioned in the Analysis of each group
would be similar to the real failure nature of their constructed bridge.

Time Consumption - Maximum Time Allocation for the construction would be 5

hours. But all the groups who would finish their fabrication within the time
allocation would be eligible to earn marks depending on the remaining time of the
originally allocated duration of 5 hours.

Load Forecast - Teams are eligible to earn a maximum of 5 marks for the forecasting of
their bridges' bearable strength. It would be evaluated based on the closest forecast to the
failure.

Neatness and Aesthetic - Judge panel would award marks for the neatness and the
aesthetic beauty of the bridge. But priority would be given to neatness and the
different shapes of the bridge would not result in differentiation of marks under
aesthetic beauty criteria.

10. Judging

Bridges would be loaded in front of the contestants and the judging panel. But Prior to loading
judge panel would check and clarify whether bridges are in compliance with the rules and
regulations provided. If any bridge fails to meet the requirements would be disqualified by the
Judges.

NOTE: JUDGES' DECISION WOULD BE THE FINAL DECISION AND IT WON'T BE

CHANGED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. The judges have the right to disqualify any
bridge that in their opinion is in violation of the intent or letter of the rules. The judges have
the right to accept any bridge that in their opinion is consistent with the rules.

7
8