Baahubali
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After creating box office records, SS Rajamouli's "Baahubali" has now found its way to an assessment test paper for civil engineering students in Tamil Nadu.

For the structural analysis paper, the fall semester engineering students of the Vellore Institute of Technology were asked to calculate the optimum structural stability of the sets while shooting "Baahubali - The Conclusion". It is the sequel, so to speak, of the magnum opus project "Baahubali - The Beginning", which has been doing roaring business at the box office, both in India and abroad. 

Two 20-mark questions and one 10-mark question, based on the hit film were included by assistant professor Mahendra Gattu to help students enjoy the learning process.

"Rather than asking conventional textbook questions by merely changing the values, I set the question based on a popular movie," Gattu told The New Indian Express.

In the first question, the students had to find out the maximum weight the hero can carry while standing on a top beam of the set, ensuring the safety of the actor.

Question 1 based on "Baahubali"

National Award winning director SS Rajamouli is directing "Baahubali – The Conclusion" starring UR Prabhas and D Rana. The movie had grand sets which require good engineering design as the safety f actors is dependant on the structural integrity of the set. You are the engineer in charge of the design of these sets.

For the war scenes, a sequence of frames of the following shape is erected. The hero stands on the top beam and during the fight sequence jumps from one frame to the adjacent frame, So, in all the frames, the load acts on the top beam only.

The beam can carry a maximum moment of 10kN.m also known as moment capacity (ie, the frame fails if the moment in any of the three beams exceeds 10kN.m). For design consideration, the load can act anywhere between A and B. Assuming suitable weight of hero Prabhas (preferably > 90 kg, you don't want your hero to look like Ishant Sharma), what is the additional weight in the form of costumes and war weapons which the hero can carry when standing on the top beam so that the moment anywhere on the beam does not exceed its moment capacity. The load can be treated as point load as shown in Figure 1b. Hint : Find the maximum moment for P=1kN acting at B.)

Check out other questions in the question paper below: