Building a better trebuchet / Cornhole Anyone?

So we are now only 41 days away from this year's 10th Annual Vermont Pumpkin Chuckin' Festival on Sunday, September 30, 2018, at Stoweflake Mountain Resort, Stowe, Vermont.

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New truss-based throwing arm for Boomer Trebuchet

One of the key engineering decisions regarding building a trebuchet for the Vermont Pumpkin Chuckin' competition is now much weigh to allocate to the throwing arm, versus the counter-weight.

If you over engineer your arm, and give it too much weight, you will be sacrificing weight that could be used on the counter-weight to give you more force in the thrown. Throw force is proportional to the weight of the counter-weight and the distance that it is dropping.

Here above is a picture from Dave Jordan's newly designed heavyweight trebuchet throwing arm (heavyweights have a maximum weight limit of 500 lbs). Dave is cutting down the weight of the throwing arm by building it more like a truss bridge. A truss bridge is a bridge whose load-bearing superstructure is composed of a truss, a structure of connected elements forming triangular units. The connected elements (typically straight) may be stressed from tension, compression, or sometimes both in response to dynamic loads.

By building a truss trebuchet arm, the goal is to make the arm as light as possible without failing. Dave is running tests to see at what force the arm fails, he then adds back just a little more strength to his truss arm so that it won't fail under his projected throw force.

Understanding the math behind bearing loads on a truss structure is a core skill for any engineering student.

Example of engineering truss force diagram for a bridge

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Cornhole Anyone?

This year along with the Pumpkin Chuckin', Chili Cook-off contest, live music, food, etc.we are also planning on having a doubles Cornhole Tournament. We like the idea of adding another form of throwing organic farm produce through the air to our festival. More info will be provide shortly about the tournament. We are in the process of getting a tournament director on board.

Cornhole: throwing farm produce for pleasure

One of the fun things will be coming up with a good name for your doubles cornhole team. Some of our favorites: Men of the Husk, Boss of the Toss, or Driving Miss Maizey.

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Reminder:

All proceeds from the 10th Annual Vermont Pumpkin Chuckin' Festival will go to benefit the non-profit Clarina Howard Nichols Center.

Clarina Howard Nichols Center

Founded in 1981, the Clarina Howard Nichols Center works to end domestic and sexual violence in Lamoille County. Clarina provides advocacy programs, emergency shelter, support and direct services to survivors of domestic and sexual violence as well as community outreach programs to affect social change.

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