Biomimetics of stabilized earth construction: Challenges and opportunities

Reddi, Srikanth; Jain, Arun K.; Yun, Hae‐Bum; Reddi, Lakshmi N.

doi:10.1016/j.enbuild.2012.09.024

Cited by 19 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…This fluctuation of temperature in known as thermal mass effect (Pacheco-Torgal & Jalali, 2012). A recent study concerning to biomimetics of stabilized earth (Reddi, Jain, Yun & Reddi, 2012) applied thermoregulatory concepts of biological systems to show that the use of stabilized earth in construction can provide thermal regulation for dwellings, similar to what a skin does to regulate the body temperature in humans and animals. Therefore, earth structures provide cool internal environments in hot climates such as the Atacama Desert, and warm internal environments in winter in hillside places such as southern Chile.…”

Section: Benefits Of Living In Earth Buildingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Obstacles and motivations for earthbag social housing in Chile: energy, environment, economic and codes implications

Cataldo-Born

Araya-Letelier

Pabón

2016

Revista de la Construcción

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Chile presents a social housing deficit that needs to be addressed with solutions that increase habitability and environmental benefits. This paper addresses the benefits of implementing earthbag buildings as an option to mitigate the existing social housing deficit in Chile. A literature review presents details on the use of earthbag buildings around the world, and motivations and obstacles for implementing earthbag buildings in Chile. In particular, a case study was simulated to compare an earthbag social house to a reinforced brick masonry social house in terms of environmental and economic performances such as CO 2 emissions, energy and costs. It is concluded that both alternatives generate similar CO 2 emissions, but the earthbag social house can save up to 20% of energy during its life cycle. In economic terms, the earthbag social house generates savings of 50% and 38% for initial investment and life cycle cost, respectively, compared to the reinforced brick masonry social house. The implementation of earthbag social housing projects would be encouraged by the development of a Chilean building code for earthbag design that provides guidance on the safe use of this technique in a seismic country.

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Section: Benefits Of Living In Earth Buildingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Obstacles and motivations for earthbag social housing in Chile: energy, environment, economic and codes implications

Cataldo-Born

Araya-Letelier

Pabón

2016

Revista de la Construcción

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“…Although widespread and practical application of biomimicry as an architectural design method remains largely unrealized, several biomimicry solutions and optimization methods have already been successfully implemented in building systems [25][26][27][28]. Recently, the integration of biomimetics has also emerged in building and energy research in order to achieve a more sustained built environment [29][30][31][32]. Two approaches have been developed to utilize biomimicry in engineering and architecture, including a problembased approach and a solution-based approach [33,34].…”

Section: Background and Research Objectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Toward mitigating urban heat island effects: Investigating the thermal-energy impact of bio-inspired retro-reflective building envelopes in dense urban settings

Han

Taylor

Pisello

2015

Energy and Buildings

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a b s t r a c tMore than one-third of energy expenditure is attributable to buildings. Urbanization is leading to tighter spatial interrelationships among buildings, which is escalating building energy consumption due to the impact of buildings on one another. This, in turn, is exacerbating Urban Heat Island (UHI) effects. We sought a bio-inspired solution to this significant engineering issue and discovered a similar heat island effect in flowers, namely the "micro-greenhouse effect." However, a special cooling effect has been observed in a temperate flower-Galanthus nivalis-which generates cooler intrafloral temperatures. In this paper, we studied the special retro-reflecting property of the flower petals, which has been suggested as a possible contributor to this cooling effect, and modeled a bio-inspired retro-reflective building envelope. We conducted cross-regional energy simulation of building networks in order to examine its thermal-energy impact. We found that building surface temperatures dropped considerably when neighboring buildings were retrofitted with a bio-inspired retro-reflective faç ade. We concluded that a bio-inspired retro-reflective building envelope can; (1) lessen the reflected heat of solar radiation in spatially proximal buildings leading to reduced UHI, and (2) reduce the energy required for cooling. These findings have broad implications for building design, urban planning, development of retro-reflective technology, and environmental conservation.

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“…The number of research studies suggests that nature has developed many technologies that can solve everyday problems (Gan et al, 2016;Karthaus, 2012;Zhang et al, 2019). The biomimetic techniques have been widely used in recent years for designing the lightweight and high strength materials in the field of military, aerospace, aircraft, construction, automotive, and so on (Koch et al, 2009;Reddi et al, 2012;Zhou et al, 2020). Researchers are putting the efforts on designing the materials, which are mimic elytra of the insects.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Role of Micro-Architectures on Insects' Elytra Affects the Nanomechanical and Optical Properties: Inspired for Designing the Lightweight Materials

Jyoti,

Tripathy

2023

JOPR

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The structural coloration of insects has received significant attention in the field of nanophotonic which has related properties with bio photonic crystals. The main focus in this study is on structural and mechanical features of wasp and beetle elytra such as Chrysidinae (is the specimen of parasitoid or kleptoparasitic wasp), Rhomborhina gigantea (RG is the specimen of bettle in the family of Cetoniidae) and chrysolina coerulans (CC is a species of beetle in the family Chrysomelidae) . The nanostructures present on the surface of elytra show the optical and deformable material properties. Surface morphology has been measured by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The depths of the hemispherical cavities present on the elytra have been analyzed using AFM. The optical and nanomechanical properties of the beetle elytra have also been studied. To measure the reflectivity in transverse electric (TE) and transverse magnetic (TM) mode, UV-visible spectroscopy has been used. The value of the average index of refraction is observed as 1.8 in all three species and the half-pitch of elytra’s varies from 0.139-0.136 μm in CC, 0.123-0.114 μm in Chrysidinae, and 0.154-0.161 μm in (RG). Nanoindentation was used to measure the modulus and hardness of the different beetle’s elytra. Higher value of elastic modulus (1.72 GPa) and hardness (0.89 GPa) in RG of elytra plays a significant role in resisting force. The photonic structure exhibits optical intrinsic color mixing properties which are used in the anticounterfeiting fields (currency and passport identification codes). The structural properties of beetle elytra would help to design the light-weight, high strength, anti coating sensor, color-changing micro air vehicles and novel optical materials.

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Biomimetics of stabilized earth construction: Challenges and opportunities

Cited by 19 publications

References 42 publications

Obstacles and motivations for earthbag social housing in Chile: energy, environment, economic and codes implications

Obstacles and motivations for earthbag social housing in Chile: energy, environment, economic and codes implications

Toward mitigating urban heat island effects: Investigating the thermal-energy impact of bio-inspired retro-reflective building envelopes in dense urban settings

Role of Micro-Architectures on Insects' Elytra Affects the Nanomechanical and Optical Properties: Inspired for Designing the Lightweight Materials

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