Development of sustainable building components utilizing date palm midribs for light wide-span multi-purpose structures for rural communities in Egypt

Structural Performance of Arched Space Trusses Using Date Palm Midribs for Light and Cost-Effective Construction in Egypt

“…Those simple techniques require no extensive preparation for midribs prior to use. This ability of direct use is due to the ability of the peripheral cover of a date palm midrib to resist humidity and direct sunlight [1,8]. Thus, all those characteristics led to the widespread utilization of date palm midribs among the poor rural societies in Egypt, such as in several products for household and vernacular rural housing [6,8].…”

“…This ability of direct use is due to the ability of the peripheral cover of a date palm midrib to resist humidity and direct sunlight [1,8]. Thus, all those characteristics led to the widespread utilization of date palm midribs among the poor rural societies in Egypt, such as in several products for household and vernacular rural housing [6,8]. The know-how behind this surviving heritage still enjoy high popularity among craftsmen in Egypt, which makes it possible to build on this knowledge for further exploitation of the potential of the material [2,9,10].…”

“…Introducing date palm midribs as a local and cost-efficient material for light wide-span construction would contribute to solving the problem of the lack of shaded public areas that are increasingly needed in order to shelter users from the hot summer mornings in rural areas in Egypt [11].Such manner is clearly inspired by the international trend to rethink construction utilizing bio-based building materials such as bamboo and reeds [12]. However, the main challenge in developing date palm midribs-based construction is to achieve durability, flexibility and sophistication, in order to match the demands of the contemporary youth and restore their faith in local materials [13], while sustaining their simplicity and cost efficiency without complicated connections or excessive industrialization [7,8].…”

“…However, as the date palm midribs bundles were relatively heavier than their reed counterpart, the available manpower led to the decrease of the diameter to only 250 mm instead of the 700 mm diameter of the reed bundles in the Mudhif [15]. This decrease caused high deformations in the arches, which led to the addition of intermediate palm trunks columns, which subsequently reduced the span from the intended 13 m to 3.25 m between the columns [8,15,16]. Nevertheless, the main gain of this trial was maintaining the simplicity of the system where the used date palm midribs were in their original shape without any processing.…”

“…However, the cross vault module restricted the area to be square shaped to create the dome skeleton form. Moreover, the repetition of the arches footings along the perimeter of the covered area restrained the openness and the ability for future expansion of the function inside [8].…”