CONSTRUCTING ENVIRONMENTS ENVS10003 JOURNAL EMMA BUNN
Week 1 2nd August 2013 COMPRESSION:
A force that tends to shorten or squeeze something, decreasing its volume OR The degree to which a substance has decreased in size (in volume, length, or some other dimension) after being or while being subject to stress.
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ANALYSIS- Due to the shape of the small wooden block this limited the flexibility we had in a design process. We decided to follow a simple but effiective design process by creating a 3 walled structure with a roof. After completing this we tested out the streghth of the structure by placeing a water bootle on top of the roof. The structure withheld the weight of the waterbottle but was starting to cave in from the centre of the roof outwards, creating the walls to angle in order to support the roofing. To allow for more weight to be added we decided to strenghten the structure by adding another layer so that the compression level in the structure would increase compacting the materials therefore resulting in the shortening of the wood allowing for the weight load being held to also increase. LOAD PATHS- Until the second layer of the structure was added the structure started to collaspe in the centre of the roof due to the both the left and right wall angling in to support the weight on the roof. With the addition of the second layer of walls the weight load was able to increase due to the increase in comppression evident in the structure, therefore spreading out the total weight load of waterbottle more efecitivley
load path spread evenly over the 3 walls and roof. EFFICIENCY OF THE MATERIAL-WOODEN BLOCKS: Although wood is a common building material due to its extensive availability and ease of fabrication for this activity the effienceny of flexiblilty in the small wooden blocks we were given to use meant that the and shape of structual designs were limited without the use of other materials such as glue or rubber bands, which also effects the maximum level of compression able to be reached.
Examples of construction concepts by fellow class members:
GLOSSARY: CARBON FOOTPRINT: Carbon Footprint measures the total emission of greenhouse gases caused by a organisation, event, product or person usually measured in tons over a monthly or annual total of CO2 output. The emissions of greenhouse gases like CO2 contribtute to global warming with 98% of atmospheric CO2 coming from the combustion of fossil fuels. (http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/carbon-footprint.htm)