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Wednesday
Sep232009

Deployable Skin

DateWednesday, September 23, 2009 at 12:30PM

Can the skin respond to its environment?

 Using thermal expansion and contraction to regulate solar heat and light gains,the skin becomes a flexible system to accommodate climate changes. When it iswarm, the skin expands providing more shading for the structure. This willallow the structure to maintain cool temperatures and diluted, ambientlighting. When conditions are cool, the skin contracts to allow for optimumsolar heat and light gains.

Scale becomes an important factor; changes in size and shape are exponentialwhen changing scale.  At a small scalethe difference may only be noticed at the molecular level. Therefore, a largescale may be needed for the entire system of materials to change substantially.The movement of the skin can also be directed to certain areas where it isneeded the most (ie. around windows).

Linear expansion or contraction is small in comparison tovolumetric expansion or contraction. Assuming a material is isotropic innature, a linear expansion of 10x, becomes a two-dimensional expansion of 100x,becomes a volumetric expansion of 10000x. These properties could be used tohelp amplify expansion and contraction in the building skin.

Bimetallic strips show that by pairing materials with different thermalexpansion coefficients, desired shapes and sizes can be designed for differentconditions. The example shown uses iron and aluminum to demonstrate thedifferent reactions of the materials. This could be used to make the skinencase the building or open up to the environment in different temperatures.

In these ways, the skin can effectively respond to itsenvironment, making the system more energy efficient and improving usercomfort.

Jessica Fuller

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