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The challenge | The teams | The designs | The test | The demolition
This week our intrepid teams have just three days to build a colossal multi-storey car park. It must have a minimum area of 540 square feet (50 square metres) and stand 24 feet (7.3 metres) high. Not only must the structure be able to withstand the weight of two cars, it also has to withstand a mighty crash. For the test, a third car will be forced to collide with the car park at 50mph. If the towering buildings can handle that, they still have to be strong enough for Demolition Day when each team tries to be first in reducing the opposition's hard work to rubble.
Grant Scholes: Engineer
Grant is a civil engineer who specialises in bridges. One of his biggest challenges to date was to be part of the team that jacked up the 50,000-tonne Kingston Bridge in Glasgow, so he's not easily daunted.
John Mitchell: Builder
John is qualified in building engineering and management. He has built all sorts of structures, from football stadiums to mobile phone towers. He's certainly not scared to argue his point, so there could be fireworks.
Dave McInven: Demolition
Dave has been destroying things since he was 13. He loves the challenge of wrecking structures and is never happier than when controlling some chaos. His great sense of humour should help the team too.
Eddie Mewies: Engineer
Eddie is a chartered civil engineer. Since he qualified, over eight years ago, he has worked on a number of exciting projects. At the moment he specialises in residential developments but he's also working on an extension to the runway of Coventry airport.
Jason Richardson: Builder
Jason is a structural engineer based in Norwich. His experience ranges from houses on stilts to luxury apartments. He's even built the odd car park in the past, which could be an asset to the team.
Matthew Cole: Demolition
Matthew is the boss of his family firm, which has been dismantling things since 1942. He was also in the army as a lad and thinks he can work well under pressure. Well up on health & safety legislation, he shouldn't have too many run-ins with the Enforcer.
A multi-storey car park requires many of the same attributes as a bridge. Floors that can withstand heavy weights need to be suspended above each other with few supports. In the real world they are constructed with steel-reinforced concrete, but Demolition Day provides only a limited amount of materials. These include timber, plastic pipe and telegraph poles. With only a small amount of concrete available, the teams face a considerable challenge.
The Scottish team, Gael Force, aim to distribute the weight of their structure over six pylons. These will support a bridge made of wooden trusses. The bridge will then carry the weight of a large timber box section that incorporates the floors where the cars are to park. A large timber roof will top the structure.
Smash & Trash opt for an interesting hexagonal structure. Using concrete-filled plywood boxes as foundations, they support six telegraph poles in plastic pipe sockets. These poles in turn support two timber platforms which will hold the cars. A simple spire-shaped truss roof is added, together with plastic pipe spirals whose purpose is to inhibit the demolition machines.
After some tough times building the structures, including Gael Force's John having a few run-ins with the construction crew, both impressive structures await the test.
The judge this week is Peter Ayres. He's a senior director of Faber Maunsell Structural Engineering and a Chartered Civil Engineer and a Chartered Structural Engineer, so he knows his stuff.
The test this week is made up of two parts. Firstly the structures need to withstand the weight of two hatchbacks being loaded on to their floors. Then a third car is crashed into a corner of each building at 50mph. If the structure is still standing after that lot, it's considered to have passed. The team that has built the best structure has first choice of the demolition tools.
First up, Smash & Trash's structure is loaded up with the cars. No problem there: the structure is so solid it doesn't even move. However being non-flexible could be a problem. Now for the second part of the test: a family saloon smashes right into a side support. Wham! The car rips the side out of a platform and takes a support with it. The first floor collapses and the second floor is badly damaged. Their car park fails.
Gael Force watch with gritted teeth as the car-loading part of the test starts to pull apart the structure, which is only nailed together. Though it's only just holding together when it's time for the crash, the saloon rips through a support pillar but amazingly the structure holds up. Gael Force's car park passes the test.
Judge Peter Ayres announces Gael Force's success so far, so Dave McInven has first choice of the tools of destruction. After seeing the opposition's structure he goes for the grapple. Matthew Cole opts for the wrecking ball and the teams get ready to play. Everything (except the cars) must be destroyed to less than 1 metre above the ground.
The claxon sounds and Gael Force's grapple viciously snatches the top hatchback car right off the platform. It's caught up in some steel cable and the machine strains until the whole structure is eventually pulled over.
Meanwhile, Smash & Trash use the wrecking ball to pulverise the legs on the timber bridge. It smashes to the floor but the rigid box remains. Both teams now concentrate their efforts on levelling the mangled wrecks before them. It's a close battle and finally Gael Force succeed in beating Smash & Trash by a whisker. The Scots are the champions.
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