The most important rule of designing patterns of positioning or removing blocks for this experiment is related to their stability. In terms of stability of blocks, to remain in their positions in the structure, not to fall down, there are some very simple, obvious rules. There are five main conditions that would result in a block stay stable in its position (the position of each block remains constant during the process in this experiment). There are three situations in which a block rests on the other one and remain constant, because the (G) vector (a vector from block’s volume centroid towards earth) goes through another block. There are two other situations that would result in a stable block, one when the block has two other supports at its two sides (the Bridge condition), and another one when it has been cantilevered and has enough weight on top of itself to keep it constant as well (the Cantilever condition). Although in both cases the G vector goes through an empty space, the block remains stable in its position.
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Fig.11.8. Five different conditions of stable blocks: 1, 2 and 3 are in ‘resting’ conditions, 4 in ‘Bridge’ and 5 in ‘Cantilever’ Condition.
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The idea is to convert this game into an algorithm. I am designing an algorithm in which I want to have five layers of Jenga blocks, each comprised of five blocks with four different initial states. The aim is to randomly remove blocks from layers and get a stable structure at the end. In order to design the algorithm there are two processes needed; one to distribute blocks with various initial states in different layers and remove some of them, two is to control if the structure is stable or not (a design problem and a criterion to evaluate the product).
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xi. Optimization
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