Development of the Structural Uses of Date Palm Rachis for Cheap Wide Span Construction for Rural Communities in the Middle East

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

“…Those values, while compared to the corresponding values of the European red pine wood, 78 N/mm 2 and beech wood, 97 N/mm 2 , show promising competitiveness that encourages previous and current researches to introduce date palm midribs as source for wood substitute [2,3,18]. This longitudinal arrangement of the fibers without cross-linking led to the need to employ date palm midribs in a form-active structural element to achieve high structural efficiency [7,8]. The idea of structural efficiency is built on the fact that axial stresses can be more uniformly distributed over the cross-section than in the case with bending stresses [21].…”

“…In traditional roofing in the rural areas in Egypt (Figure 1d), date palm midribs are laid over beams made from date palm trunks and thick layers of mud are added over the midribs for thermal insulation [6]. Those example show that date palm midribs are utilized as reliable materials to benefit from their abundance, high renewability rate, and cost-efficiency [6,7]. As realized from the technical heritage of date palm midribs in Egypt, depending on ropes for fastening and using simple friction-based connections were the basic techniques needed when utilizing date palm midribs in the majority of that heritage [2].…”

“…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].…”

“…If the loads are applied on the hinged connections of the triangulation, then the sides of the triangles will carry only axial forces with relatively high efficiency of the material [21]. The first trial of using date palm space trusses depended on shredding the midribs into thin strips, than pressing the strips using formaldehyde to produce 100 mm × 100 mm × 1000 mm elements as the chords of the square pyramid units of the space truss [3,7,22], as shown in Figure 3. The designed joinery was fixing the endings of the chords with U-shaped high strength bolts to steel plates.…”

“…In traditional roofing in the rural areas in Egypt (Figure 1d), date palm midribs are laid over beams made from date palm trunks and thick layers of mud are added over the midribs for thermal insulation [6]. Those example show that date palm midribs are utilized as reliable materials to benefit from their abundance, high renewability rate, and cost-efficiency [6,7].…”