Architecture That Changes Shape In Response To Heat 34
An anonymous reader writes "A group of students at Barcelona's Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalunya has created a functioning prototype of architecture that adapts to environmental inputs. "The project, Translated Geometries, tackles the idea by developing a new use for Shape Memory Polymers, a composite material that can deform and return to its original state when activated by cues like heat, humidity and light." The idea is this: create a wall or a roof out of a series of folded triangles. At low temperatures, the roof would be in its folded state, laying mostly flat. When exposed to heat, the creases would flex and expand, unfolding the roof and giving it a much greater surface area, thereby increasing its convective cooling. As it cools, it folds back down into a smaller shape."
Noisy? (Score:2)
And I thought the constant hum of air conditioning units was annoying. I'd hope this wouldn't be as annoying as waiting for a leaky gutter to finally plop out the next drop of water.
A solution with no problem in sight... (Score:2)
Don't worry. At 70 degrees Celsius all water from the gutter will just evaporate and your air conditioner will catch fire.
But you'll be too busy being boiled like an egg [livescience.com] to care about the noise.
From TFA:
Exposing the SMP to heat above 60 to 70 degrees Celsius causes the material to become flexible enough to undergo geometric deformations. The material then cools into its new rigid form. Apply another round of heat, and it will return to its original memory state.
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House I'm living in now is 40 years old or a bit more.
House I lived in previously was 50 years old, or a bit more.
Only people I know personally who live in a house less than ten years old just built the house....
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Oh look, a 370 year old house made of wood [wikipedia.org].
Building a house out of wood doesn't automatically mean that it'll fall down in 10 years. If a wood framed structure fails that early, the fault lies either with the architectural planning or the use of low quality wood that isn't suitable for construction.
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Many of them are made of wood, which makes it cheap compared to a "real" house.
What a dumbass. Don't you realize the majority of house in the US are made of wood? Even the ones that look like brick are wood house with a brick facade.
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It would change maybe twice a day in practice. The idea is to lower energy consumption, not eliminate it. It only needs to move occasionally when the energy needed can be more than recovered.
Lots of big things have lasted 100 years of operation. Some bridges are raised several times a day, for example.
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Evaporative cooling doesn't work very well in really hot, dry areas like Arizona, Nevada, Southern Utah, etc. in the US. What you end up with is instead of 110 F and ~10% rel humidity you get ~100 F and 90% rel humidity. In other words, you end up worse off.
More solar exposure? (Score:2)
So, help me out here. The roof gets hot, so it expands, thereby exposing much more surface to the sunlight. How is this considered a good thing?
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If it still intercept the same solid angle as seen from the sun, ignoring all non-linear issues, you'll get the same solar power heating. The article second figure seems to just expose folds that were hidden before.
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The roof gets hot, so it expands, thereby exposing much more surface to the sunlight.
Nope. It's exposing a larger area to roughly the same amount of sunlight.
_ _ _ _ _ _ -> /\_/\_/\_/\
How is this considered a good thing?
From TFS:
thereby increasing its convective cooling.
We called them Mood Rings (Score:1)
And the like. Very 1970s. Welcome. To the machine.
Is it going to work for 50 years or 150 years? (Score:2)
A house is something that has to work for very long times. You don't just put mechanical parts on a house that will have to work for such a long time. It's a house, not a car. And you wouldn't want to live in a house that needs regular maintenance of major parts of its structure, not to mention keeping everything of that sealed etc.
It's one thing to build a toy, it's another to build a house.
Building codes and other methods (Score:2)
First issue is will this material be suitable for wind speeds of 100 miles per hour?
I live in a coastal city where wind gusts reach that speed and that is "a bad winter storm".
Did they think to look at the mechanical ventilators used on glass houses? These are driven by the thermal expansion of wax (incompressible fluids can exert a very large force)
For the cost of the proposed surface perhaps they should be looking at optimal spacing of solar panels (solar panels have a higher initial cost but have a long
The actual website (Score:2)
http://www.iaac.net/ [iaac.net]
Thermochromic paint (Score:3)
I'd rather use thermochromic paints.
You might be able to find other references, but here is a whole study. http://heatisland2009.lbl.gov/... [lbl.gov]
Prior art. (Score:1)
There are already habitable structures that change shape in response to heat. The igloo.
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"..and most homes do too" -- Vinny "the torch"
Candle Wax (Score:2)
Wouldn't "shade scales" be better? (Score:2)
Think of those plastic pieces in the video, but as separate pieces arranged in a lattice similar to that of fish scales. Each scale would have a hinge on top and heat would cause the scales to push themselves off the wall. Then, when they get hot, they would shade the wall, but when cool could lie flat to create a partially (leaky, I'm sure) insulating air pocket between the building wall and the scale wall.
Seems simpler, and if a few scales fail, then they could be easily tageted for replacement.
Passive heating and cooling (Score:1)