Automated Hydroponic Gardening: 2011

Friday, March 25, 2011

One acre comprises 4,840 square yards, 43,560 square feet
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^[1] or about 4,046.86 square meters

sqR=208.710’

208.71’=20.87x10

208’=26.08x8’

In 1958, the United States and countries of the Commonwealth of Nations defined the length of the international yard to be 0.9144 metres.^[2] Consequently, the international acre is exactly 4,046.8564224 square metres. Since the difference between the U.S. and International acre is only approximately 0.016 square metres, it is usually not important which one is being discussed.

United States survey acre

The United States survey acre is approximately 4,046.872 609 874 252 square metres; its exact value (4046^13,525,426⁄_15,499,969 m²) is based on an inch defined by 1 metre = 39.37 inches exactly, as established by the Mendenhall Order.

8x10 = 26x20 = 2087 robo spaces

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Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Water Cube Architectural-The 2008 Olympics National Swimming Center - Home Design Ideas | Decorating | Gardening

Water Cube Architectural-The 2008 Olympics National Swimming Center - Home Design Ideas | Decorating | Gardening: "Water Cube Architectural-The 2008 Olympics National Swimming Center

by archinspire

This is the main venue for swimming events at the 2008 Olympics. Built by a team from the Australian architecture firm PTW, Arup, and China State Construction and Engineering (CSCEC) explored evolutionary biology, arcane 19th-century geometry, and the latest computer-modeling technology, racing against a competition deadline for the design of this swimming pools.

The team had already learned that Herzog & de Meuron’s bird’s-nest scheme was selected for the National Stadium next door. “We wanted to do something different from Herzog & de Meuron’s design,” recalls Tristram Carfrae, the leader of the Arup delegation. “Their’s was red and round, so our’s would be blue and boxy.” Since swimming pools need to be heated most of the year, the team figured that a greenhouse-a building that captures and holds solar energy-would be the most efficient structure for the job. That led to the notion of a continuous skin for the roof and walls, one that would be transparent or translucent. Glass wouldn’t be right, because its acoustics would create a din inside the building. So the team selected ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE), a transparent form of the plastic Teflon. In addition to being acoustically transparent, the material is lightweight and remarkably sturdy even at thicknesses as little as 0.008 inches (0.2 millimeters).

aquatic swimming pool olympcs china

Looking at forms and patterns found in nature, the group started designing the skin. They quickly focused on soap bubbles and what happens to their geometry when they congregate. At first, the designers tried clustering cylinders to create a flat roof and walls, but weren’t happy with the gaps between the cylinders and the awkward shift from vertical cylinders (to support the roof) to horizontal ones (to support the walls). In their search for the most efficient way to divide space into cells of equal size with the least surface area between them, the designers explored solutions proposed in the 19th century by Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau and British mathematician William Thomson Kelvin, and by the Irish physicist Denis Weaire and his assistant Robert Phelan in the late 20th century. Eventually, the team adapted Weaire and Phelan’s ideas, developing a building skin made of cells with either 14 or 12 sides. “We wanted the bubble pattern to seem random, not repetitious,” explains Chris Bosse, who was one of the project architects for PTW and now runs his own firm in Sydney called the Laboratory for Visionary Architecture (LAVA). Using the Weaire-Phelan geometry, the group created a skin made of 4,000 ETFE bubbles, some as large as 30 feet across, with seven different sizes for the roof and 15 for the walls.

A space frame assembled on-site from 22,000 steel tubes welded to 12,000 nodes holds the cells in place and provides a column-free structure with spans of 396 feet in either direction. The three-dimensional frame is nondirectional-meaning it has no up or down, left or right-making it perfect for a high-seismic zone such as Beijing. The chemically treated water in the pools and the air pollution outside the building, though, are both corrosive. So the design team placed the steel frame inside a cavity made of two layers of ETFE pillows. For the roof, the cavity is 25 feet deep, and for the walls it is 12 feet.

Called the Water Cube (even though it’s a box 584 feet square and 102 feet high, not a cube), the rectangular design won over the competition jury. Completed early this year, the building seems to float on water, thanks to a reflecting pool surrounding it and a gentle cascade of water washing down its base and into the pool. Inside, the bubble theme continues with circles incised on the floor of the main lobby and a Bubble Lounge on the second floor where-you guessed it-champagne is served at bars made of smooth Corian dotted with circles.

Related Searches: etfe, space frame design structures, swimming stadium interior, space frame water cube structure details org, water cube, architectural materials indoor pool competition, water cube plan

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AquaPod entrepreneur making waves in government circles, ocean gyres - Ethan Andrews - Belfast

AquaPod entrepreneur making waves in government circles, ocean gyres - Ethan Andrews - Belfast - Waldo - The Republican Journal

Space frame - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Space frame - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "[close]

Space frame
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
The roof of this industrial building is supported by a space frame structure.

A space frame or space structure is a truss-like, lightweight rigid structure constructed from interlocking struts in a geometric pattern. Space frames can be used to span large areas with few interior supports. Like the truss, a space frame is strong because of the inherent rigidity of the triangle; flexing loads (bending moments) are transmitted as tension and compression loads along the length of each strut.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Overview
* 2 History
* 3 Applications
o 3.1 Construction
o 3.2 Vehicles
* 4 Design methods
* 5 See also
* 6 External links

[edit] Overview
Simplified space frame roof with the half-octahedron highlighted in blue

The simplest form of space frame is a horizontal slab of interlocking square pyramids built from aluminium or tubular steel struts. In many ways this looks like the horizontal jib of a tower crane repeated many times to make it wider. A stronger purer form is composed of interlocking tetrahedral pyramids in which all the struts have unit length. More technically this is referred to as an isotropic vector matrix or in a single unit width an octet truss. More complex variations change the lengths of the struts to curve the overall structure or may incorporate other geometrical shapes.
[edit] History

Space frames were independently developed by Alexander Graham Bell around 1900 and Buckminster Fuller in the 1950s. Bell's interest was primarily in using them to make rigid frames for nautical and aeronautical engineering. Few of his designs were realised. Buckminster Fuller's focus was architectural structures; his work had greater influence.
[edit] Applications
If a force is applied to the blue node, and the red bar is not present, the behaviour of the structure depends completely on the bending rigidity of the blue node. If the red bar is present, and the bending rigidity of the blue node is negligible compared to the contributing rigidity of the red bar, the system can be calculated using a rigidity matrix, neglecting angular factors.
[edit] Construction

Space frames are a common feature in modern construction; they are often found in large roof spans in modernist commercial and industrial buildings.

Notable examples of buildings based on space frames include:

* Stansted airport in London, by Foster and Partners
* Bank of China Tower and the Louvre Pyramid, by I. M. Pei
* Rogers Centre by Rod Robbie and Michael Allan
* McCormick Place East in Chicago
* Eden Project in Cornwall, England
* Globen, Sweden - Dome with diameter of 110 m, (1989)
* Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Arizona

Large portable stages and lighting gantries are also frequently built from space frames and octet trusses.

In February 1986, Paul C. Kranz walked into the U. S. Department of Transportation office in Fort Worth, Texas, with a model of an octet truss. He showed a staff person there how the octet truss was ideal for holding signs over roads. The idea and model was forwarded to the US Department of Transportation in Washington, D. C. Today, the octet truss is the structure of choice for holding signs above roads in the United States.
[edit] Vehicles

Space frames are sometimes used in the chassis designs of automobiles and motorcycles. In a space-frame, or tube-frame, chassis, the suspension, engine, and body panels are attached to a skeletal space frame, and the body panels have little or no structural function. By contrast, in a monocoque design, the body serves as part of the structure. Tube-frame chassis are frequently used in certain types of racing cars.

British manufacturers TVR were particularly well known for their tube-frame chassis designs, produced since the 1950s. Other notable examples of tube-frame cars include the Audi A8, Lotus Seven, Ferrari 360, Lamborghini Gallardo, and Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG.

Space frames have also been used in bicycles, such as those designed by Alex Moulton.
[edit] Design methods

Space frames are typically designed using a rigidity matrix. The special characteristic of the stiffness matrix in an architectural space frame is the independence of the angular factors. If the joints are sufficiently rigid, the angular deflections can be neglected, simplifying the calculations.
[edit] See also

* Platonic solids
* Body-on-frame
* Monocoque
* Backbone chassis
* Tensegrity

[edit] External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Space frames

* Information about space structures from the University of Surrey
* octet truss 3D animation

Retrieved from 'http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_frame'
Categories: Buckminster Fuller | Structural system | Structural engineering
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SpaceFrame

Straws

Straws make a simple, and extremely inexpensive modelling material for prototyping space frames.

Straws have limited strength against lateral forces - but in hub-and-strut systems, the idea is that such lateral forces are avoided as much as possible - so this isn't a big deal.

They are likely to have a limited lifespan - but they are so cheap that this hardly seems to matter much.

Another good thing about straws is that they are very light. Weight can easily become very significant when building large models.

What follows are photographs of a few straw models:

Trusses

Octet truss

Dome on concrete (side view)

Dome on concrete (top view)

Dome on grass (top view)

Dome on grass (bottom view)

Dome on grass (side view)

Hubs

These are cheap plastic hubs.

One of their faces is completely flat.

Straws were also supplied - though using one hub resulted in the straws fitting the hubs extremely poorly - resulting in very poor tensile strength properties - which severely restricted the models which could be constructed.

The supplier suggests using the hubs two-at-a-time "back to back". Doing this produces a much better fit with the supplied straws and results in a stronger joint - but it doubles the number of hubs needed to build anything with - and increases the resulting weight.

My guess is that the reason the manufacuter doesn't join the hubs together themselves is because making them this way allows them to use a simple "half cast" manufacturing process - avoiding the need for injection moulding. I suppose it makes the hubs seem cheaper as well, if they count half a hub as a hub - though doubling the hub price would still leave things pretty cheap.

I obtained these hubs from [here].

The hubs come supplied with lots of flash - which needs to be removed before use.

Unfortunately, the hubs have no "stop" on the spigots - so the joins between the straws and the hubs tend to be rather imprecise.

Since I only had a few hubs I didn't want to double them up.

So I soon switched to using regular "neon" straws from my local supermarket - which I found fitted the hubs tightly enough to build reasonable models with - though the hubs pushed the straws into an unfortunate shape; reducing their resistance to lateral forces in the process.

I joined the hubs together using brass paper fasteners - the same ones that I used for constructing this model - and [this model].

This was quick, easy and worked well - though I am aware that brass paper fasteners probably would not work very well in the intended educational context.