Senatore, G; Duffour, P; Hanna, S; Winslow, P; Wise, C; (2013) Designing adaptive structures for whole life energy savings. In: Research and Applications in Structural Engineering, Mechanics and Computation. (pp. pp. 2105-2110). Taylor & Francis/Balkema/CRC Press: London, UK.

PDF Designing_Adaptive_Structures_for_Whole_Life_Energy_Savings.pdf Download (1MB)

Abstract

Designing structures with minimal environmental impact is emerging as a seriou concern in the construction sector. Conventional structural design practice involves designing first for strength, followed by secondary checks on deflections and other serviceability limits states. If these limits are exceeded, the con-ventional solution has been to add material to increase stiffness. When the design is governed by unpredicta-ble events such as fluctuating loads, strong wind storms or earthquakes, the structure is effectively overde-signed for most of its working life. This paper presents a methodology to design adaptive structures that minimize the whole life energy consumption. The methodology is illustrated on plane pin-jointed trusses, both determinate and indeterminate. Strategically placing actuators allow the internal flow of forces to be ho-mogenized and displacements to be controlled. The actuators only start working when the loads reach a cer-tain threshold. Below this threshold, the structure resists loads mainly passively thereby limiting significantly the operational energy used. It was found that both indeterminate and determinate topologies bring substantial energy savings up to 70% of the total energy.

Download activity - last month

Export as CSVXMLJSON

Download activity - last 12 months

Export as CSVXMLJSON

Downloads by country - last 12 months

Export as XMLCSVJSON

Archive Staff Only

View Item