A new vaulted style of floor uses 75 percent less concrete than a traditional flat slab floor and could help the construction industry reduce its carbon footprint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An interdisciplinary team of structural engineers, mathematicians and manufacturing experts from the Universities of Bath, Cambridge and Dundee has unveiled a full-scale demonstration of a thin-shell floor, which uses 60 percent less carbon in its consruction than an equivalent flat slab that could carry the same load.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The curved vault-shaped structure is covered by standard raised floor panels to create a level surface, writes the University of Bath in this press release<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Created by the UKRI-funded ACORN<\/a> (Automating Concrete Construction) research project, the innovative vault-shaped floor design takes advantage of concrete\u2019s inherent natural properties and strengths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The team has demonstrated that the new process could significantly reduce the carbon footprint of our built environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dr Paul Shepherd, a Reader in Bath\u2019s\u00a0Department of Architecture & Civil Engineering<\/a>\u00a0and the Principal Investigator for ACORN, says: \u201cAchieving the net-zero targets recently ratified at the COP26 conference will require significant change by the construction industry, which is responsible for about half of the UK\u2019s total emissions. Since concrete is the world\u2019s most widely consumed material after water, and its production contributes more than 7 percent of global CO2<\/sub> emissions, the easiest way for construction to begin its journey to net-zero is to use less concrete.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat has been the driving force behind this project, which we hope could make a major difference to the impact of construction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Currently most building floors use thick flat slabs of solid concrete, which are inefficient since they rely on the bending strength of concrete to support loads. Concrete isn\u2019t very good at resisting the tension induced by bending, so these floors also need lots of steel reinforcement. Instead, ACORN\u2019s approach is to use concrete for what it is good at – resisting compression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By putting the material only where it is needed, and making sure it works in compression, the ACORN design uses far less concrete. The new shape might prove impractical to make using traditional temporary formwork, so the ACORN team has in parallel developed an automated adaptable mould and a robotic concrete spraying system that can be used in an off-site factory setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alongside this new style of fabrication, the team has also developed bespoke software to seamlessly optimise floors for a given building design, and control the automated manufacturing system to produce them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since the floor is made off-site, it also needs to be transported to site and then assembled. This brought some exciting challenges for the team, who had to split the large floor into nine transportable pieces and develop a connection system to join the pieces together. However, this also brings some advantages, in terms of reducing time needed on-site for construction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ACORN team was also able to incorporate reversible joints, so that the floor can be disassembled and reused elsewhere at the end of the building\u2019s life, promoting a circular economy for the construction industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The practicality of this integrated system has just been demonstrated to ACORN\u2019s industry partners, by making a full-scale 4.5m x 4.5m thin-shell building in the NRFIS Laboratory of Cambridge University\u2019s Civil Engineering Department.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Early results suggesting that ACORN\u2019s approach of using material sparingly can already deliver significant carbon savings, with future research likely to lead to even more as processes are optimized. Despite being the first of its kind, each piece took only half an hour to make, and the whole floor took a week to assemble \u2013 future commercial versions could be manufactured in dedicated industrial facilities much more quickly, and site erection times much reduced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dr Shepherd adds: \u201cAfter three years of research it is amazing to see the fruits of all our hard work dominating the laboratory and drawing interested looks from all who passed by. It\u2019s not every day you can jump on top of your research! I just hope that one day soon this type of low-carbon automatically manufactured building becomes so widespread that people walk by without noticing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Adam Locke, Programme Leader of the Europe Hub Technology & Innovation at Laing O’Rourke, one of the ACORN partners, adds: \u201cThe ACORN Demonstrator is a very useful stepping-stone in the progressive pathway to decarbonizing our solutions and compliments very well our own work in this area.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n ACORN has received funding from UK Research and Innovation under the ISCF Transforming Construction programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also interesting: <\/strong><\/em>Belgium is becoming more sustainable by building with green concrete<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2084,"featured_media":356003,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[126887,57599,22766,43906,46284,126889],"location":[55977],"internal_archives":[],"class_list":["post-356000","selected","type-selected","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sustainability-nl","tag-acorn","tag-carbon-footprint","tag-concrete","tag-university-of-bath","tag-university-of-cambridge","tag-university-of-dundee","location-united-kingdom"],"blocksy_meta":[],"acf":[],"featured_img":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/DvcSLX7D-6Rwfx7WI-m9L5EclV-construction-gc19d45ffe_1920-1.jpg","coauthors":[],"author_meta":{"author_link":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/author\/mauro-mereu\/","display_name":"Mauro Mereu"},"relative_dates":{"created":"Posted 4 years ago","modified":"Updated 4 years ago"},"absolute_dates":{"created":"Posted on February 21, 2022","modified":"Updated on February 21, 2022"},"absolute_dates_time":{"created":"Posted on February 21, 2022 11:30 am","modified":"Updated on February 21, 2022 11:30 am"},"featured_img_caption":"\u00a9 Pixabay","tax_additional":{"category":{"linked":["Sustainability<\/a>"],"unlinked":["Sustainability<\/span>"],"slug":"category","name":"Categories"},"post_tag":{"linked":["ACORN<\/a>","carbon footprint<\/a>","concrete<\/a>","University of Bath<\/a>","University of Cambridge<\/a>","University of Dundee<\/a>"],"unlinked":["ACORN<\/span>","carbon footprint<\/span>","concrete<\/span>","University of Bath<\/span>","University of Cambridge<\/span>","University of Dundee<\/span>"],"slug":"post_tag","name":"Tags"},"language":{"linked":["EN<\/a>"],"unlinked":["EN<\/span>"],"slug":"language","name":"Tags"},"post_translations":{"linked":[],"unlinked":[],"slug":"post_translations","name":""},"location":{"linked":["United Kingdom<\/a>"],"unlinked":["United Kingdom<\/span>"],"slug":"location","name":"Locations"},"internal_archives":{"linked":[],"unlinked":[],"slug":"internal_archives","name":"Internal Archives"}},"series_order":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/selected\/356000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/selected"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/selected"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2084"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356000"},{"taxonomy":"location","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/location?post=356000"},{"taxonomy":"internal_archives","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ioplus.nl\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/internal_archives?post=356000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Taking advantage of the concrete’s properties<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Innovations in robotics, automated design and off-site fabrication are key<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Making the floor reusable <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Carbon savings to increase<\/h3>\n\n\n\n