Geo-Mass

Geometrically Modulated, 3D-Printed Building Floor Slabs for Thermal Mass Performance Augmentation

Thermal Architecture Lab, in collaboration with Polyhedral Structures Laboratory and Shu Yang Group at UPenn, Texas A&M University, The City College of New York, KieranTimberlake, and Sika, is designing carbon-negative, medium-sized building structures by developing a high-performance structural system for carbon absorption and storage over buildings’ lifespan. The team will use a novel carbon-absorbing concrete mixture as a building material, and design and assemble a high-performance structural system with minimized mass and construction waste, and maximized surface area. The parts will be prefabricated using robotic 3D printing technology.

Using the carbon-absorbing floor structure as thermal mass, the design reduces both operational and embodied carbon throughout building life span. The basic principle of building thermal mass is that the storage material absorbs and stores heat during the day and releases it at night, with the aid of natural ventilation. In this manner, building thermal mass provides indoor temperature damping and shift, and alleviates over-reliance on mechanical cooling. Excitingly, intelligent geometry can augment thermal mass performance, while minimizing the material volume, thereby reducing the added embodied carbon associated with material use.

TAL Team: Zherui Wang (PhD Candidate, Project Lead at TAL), Xiang Zhang (Post-doctoral Research Fellow), Shi Zhan (PhD Student), Hemant Diyalanim (MSD-EBD), and Xiaoxiao Peng (MSD-EBD).

TAL Collaborators: Salmaan Craig, Jihun Kim, Saeran Vasanthakumar

Funding: This research is funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) of U.S. Department of Energy (DE-FOA-0002625 2625-1538).

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