Day three began and the Hazelwick students were back to join us. We discussed their findings in which they achieved the day before, leading us incredibly keen to use the fabric membrane as the main material for our building. After discussing the model between ourselves and a variety of lectures we were led to believe that the gradient of our slopes may not be sufficient enough to dissipate water quickly resulting in possible collections of water on the tent, which could lead to sagging on the roofs membrane.
To us this was quite a dilemma as we had constructed the shorter beams so that a good amount of headroom was still available. We tried various methods to fix this problem including raising the height of the central column or increasing the height of the larger outer beams. Both of these either had little to no effect on the run of water or diminished the visual impact of our structures roof. For this reason we decided to lower the height of the smaller outer beams, although not ideal, a desirable amount of head height beneath the structure is still achieved. To have an understanding of the gradient of the structure Tulita performed several calculations allowing us to know the percentage of the slope, which was 21.2%. A satisfactory gradient for water to run quickly off the roof.
We issued the Hazlewood students with the task of proposing a layout/plan for our A1 poster. They performed this task well which will quicken the process of assembling our information for the poster.
We began modelling our final model, starting the same way as the prototype however this time using a drill to make effective foundations for the beams, 6mm into the wood.
The masking tape was used to indicate when we had drilled to 6mm’s.
We used wood adhesive in order to secure the components of our structure together. The Hazelwood students also produced a ‘cladding’ for the container out of an old grape box. The ridges in a grape box worked incredibly well for mimicking the sides of a shipping container.
Not only did the issue with the rainfall occur however Noel suggested that in the event of heavy rain or winds, perhaps the 11M span of the roof beams would not support the weight sufficiently. Because of this we added support beams from the meeting point of the outer beams to the center of the long span roof beams. In doing this, we believed that we had produced a stronger structure. Below shows some research I was conducting into lightweight steel beams, where I stumbled across keesaftey, gratefix clamps. I thought that this could be integrated into clamping down the support beams, with the main appeal being the simplicity of the application, which only requires the tightening of a variety of bolts. I also came across an interesting steel beam product that carries similar properties to wood in terms of workability and is also 40% lighter than that of hot rolled steel. Something that could definitely be considered for the longer spanned elements of our design.
The models fabric membrane shall be replicated by the use of and painting overall from B&Q, it represent the properties of a fabric membrane quite nicely and is flexible to work with.