Interactive sandwich facade made of renewable resources

Abstract

This paper reports about the development and implementation of a free forming facade system, consisting of biobased sandwich elements. The build-up of the sandwich contains face sheets from natural fibre reinforced polymer (NFRP), using biobased epoxy resin and flax fibres, and a stuck cardboard core structure. Furthermore a formwork system was designed enabling biobased sandwich elements to be produced with special needs according to efficiency and architectural design. As a result, the biobased and sustainable sandwich elements exhibit low system weight, high sound reduction and sufficient load capacity for the use of facade elements. Additionally LED-stripes were integrated for illuminating the facade elements. Because of the regular pattern of the stuck cardboard core and the translucent face sheet laminates the facade works like a screen on which each created pixel can be controlled in rgb-colours. Therefore an area of 10 m x 5 m biobased sandwich facade with 25 elements is planned as a reference object in Chemnitz, forming a facade with 100 x 48 pixels. In summary the illuminated biobased sandwich elements produced with an efficient technology of production and with the use of renewable resources can replace extensively 3D-formed customary facade systems.

Review of literature on eco-friendly sandwich structures made of non-wood cellulose fibers

“…Azzouz et al [53] fabricated sandwich structures with 3D-printed PLA lattice cores (Figure 7) and flax-reinforced PP face sheets, and investigated their performance under various mechanical tests such as in-plane compression, out-of-plane compression, shear, and bending. Gelbrich et al [54] introduced a new generation of environmental-friendly facades based on the concept of sandwich structure made of cardboard core and flax fiber/bio-based epoxy face sheets.

Figure 7.Deflection of 3D printed PLA core sandwich structures [53]. (a) Lattice 1; (b) Lattice 2; (c) Lattice 3.

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“…This is especially important for structures made of natural fibers because one of their weaknesses is their low flame resistance. Despite the importance of this issue, only very few studies have been conducted on the flammability of eco-friendly sandwich structures made of non-wood cellulose fibers [49,54,68,73]. Therefore, it is crucial to do an in-depth research on the flammability of these structures.…”