“Can tensegrity systems, acting as a second layer in the buildings, mitigate wind funnel effect in a passage between parallel buildings improving wind comfort criteria?
The impetus of this dissertation come from the idea to mitigate wind funnel effect in big cities proposing structures that can act as windbreaks in existing urban environment improving wind comfort criteria. Tensegrity systems are chosen as design tool and guide model because they display a lot of advantages as structural systems under extreme conditions like wind vibrations and earthquake. Despite the capabilities of these structures, there are not many projects seeking to apply this knowledge to any field in particular and the lack of actual implemented applications from engineering perspective, are leaving a lot of unresolved issues with regards to real tensegrity constructions.
Despite the fact that the environmental problem examined in this thesis (wind funnel effect) is seriously affecting urban spaces and is bound to increase in the future as world population is growing and cities density is increasing, very little research has been done in an attempt to confront this phenomenon and all the studies so far do not take into account the urban spaces. As the usability of urban space is at risk, this project can act as a first step into initiating even further research on the field and at the same time has the potential to offer a viable and simultaneously practical solution to this problem.
The thesis seeks to propose a method that can create and evaluate tensegrity configurations in outdoor spaces taking into account the environmental data of each area trying to reduce wind funnel effect using Genetic Algorithms and Fast Fluid Dynamincs simulations.
The impetus of this dissertation come from the idea to mitigate wind funnel effect in big cities proposing structures that can act as windbreaks in existing urban environment improving wind comfort criteria. Tensegrity systems are chosen as design tool and guide model because they display a lot of advantages as structural systems under extreme conditions like wind vibrations and earthquake. Despite the capabilities of these structures, there are not many projects seeking to apply this knowledge to any field in particular and the lack of actual implemented applications from engineering perspective, are leaving a lot of unresolved issues with regards to real tensegrity constructions.
Despite the fact that the environmental problem examined in this thesis (wind funnel effect) is seriously affecting urban spaces and is bound to increase in the future as world population is growing and cities density is increasing, very little research has been done in an attempt to confront this phenomenon and all the studies so far do not take into account the urban spaces. As the usability of urban space is at risk, this project can act as a first step into initiating even further research on the field and at the same time has the potential to offer a viable and simultaneously practical solution to this problem.
The thesis seeks to propose a method that can create and evaluate tensegrity configurations in outdoor spaces taking into account the environmental data of each area trying to reduce wind funnel effect using Genetic Algorithms and Fast Fluid Dynamincs simulations.