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SUMMARY:Adaptive Building Structures for Whole Life Energy Savings
DTSTART:20151030T121500
DTEND:20151030T131500
DTSTAMP:20260510T164830Z
UID:ee95e1cb117a729a1bc21f9b04f10954799c74fe0c848d89d237bb3f
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Gennaro Senatore\, EngD Candidate University College London\, 
 U.K.\nDesigning structures with minimal environmental impact is now a seri
 ous concern in the construction sector. Active control has been used in ci
 vil engineering structures for a variety of purposes. The most widespread 
 application so far has been in vibration control. The potential of using a
 daptation to save material mass and crucially whether the energy saved by 
 using less material makes up the energy consumed through control and actua
 tion is a question that has so far received little attention.\nGennaro Sen
 atore developed a design method that produces an optimum adaptive structur
 e that minimizes the total energy spent throughout the whole life of the s
 tructure (embodied in the materials + operational). In a conventional desi
 gn\, members are sized based on a worst case scenario i.e. the maximum exp
 ected load combination. If embodied energy is to be saved\, clearly\, memb
 er sizing should not be governed directly by this worst load combination b
 ut by some fraction of it. As the loads approach their worst values\, pass
 ive members will reach their capacity. Then strategically located active e
 lements (actuators) provide controlled output energy in order to manipulat
 e actively the internal flow of forces and stresses. In this way stresses 
 can be homogenized and deflections kept within desired limits. The actuato
 rs are only activated for compensation of the displacements and internal f
 orces when the loads reach a certain threshold. Therefore operational ener
 gy is only used when necessary. The research to date has successfully demo
 nstrated that up to 70% reduction in structural weight and 50% of total li
 fe energy (embodied and operational) was achievable on truss like structur
 es. In addition\, using this method it is possible to achieve very slender
  structures that would not possible to design and build with conventional 
 methods.\nA large scale prototype structure was built to validate the nume
 rical findings and investigate the practicality of the method. The prototy
 pe is an ultra-slender 6m (length) x 0.8m (width) x 0.15m (depth) (40:1 sp
 an to depth) cantilevered truss structure controlled in real-time to maint
 ain serviceability conditions under loading. The structure is 80% lighter 
 than an equivalent passive one\, the data gathered from the experiments in
  terms of energy savings confirm the numerical findings obtained with the 
 simulations.\nBio : Gennaro Senatore is a researcher and designer speciali
 zed in computational methods for the design and realization of complex for
 ms and structures. He developed a novel formulation for the design and con
 trol of adaptive building structures: high performance structures (light-w
 eight\, energy efficient and increased slenderness) capable of counteracti
 ng loads actively by means of actuators\, sensors and control intelligence
 . He built a full scale prototype of an adaptive truss structure at the Un
 iversity College London structures laboratory.  He also developed a mathe
 matical formulation for an interactive real-time physics engine as aid for
  teaching structural engineering. The mathematical model was implemented a
 s the java applet Push¬MePullMe and later as the iOS app Make A Scape bot
 h distributed free of charge and currently adopted by several universities
  world-wide. He previously was the head of computational design and resear
 ch for the engineering practice Expedition Engineering.
LOCATION:GC C3 30 http://plan.epfl.ch/?lang=fr&room=GCC330
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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