Development of a structural foam wall system for freeform fabrication of residential housing structures

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Publication Type thesis
School or College College of Engineering
Department Mechanical Engineering
Author Mohammed, Samiullah
Title Development of a structural foam wall system for freeform fabrication of residential housing structures
Date 2010-03-11
Description This thesis investigates the feasibility of constructing a structural wall for a residential housing structure from layers of plastic foam. The wall will be used in a new process, now under development for rapid prototyping of residential housing structures (RPRH). Use of this foam wall in RPRH will allow for rapid production of custom designed temporary housing for events such as the Olympics or in response to emergencies such as hurricanes or other large-scale refugee evacuations. Custom homes can be rapidly and inexpensively designed that include unusual, exotic features such as bas-relief sculptures on the external walls, fireplaces or aquariums built into the structure or walls with complex curvature. Previous research has shown that home construction using wood as the primary structural element works well but it usually takes 2 to 6 months to build. The onsite construction requires crews of skilled tradesman and is typically limited to rectangular designs. Of the overall cost, 20-25% is directly tied to manual labor. This thesis reports on an alternative technique, which will build a house in 2-3 days, requires only a 2-3 person crew and can be built directly from the files generated with Computer Aided Design (CAD). To achieve this goal, a structural element for this alternative technique is needed. It is the aim of this thesis to design, construct and test a structural wall for residential building structures using polystyrene foam as the primary structural element.
Type Text
Publisher University of Utah
Subject Foamed construction
Dissertation Institution University of Utah
Dissertation Name MS
Language eng
Relation is Version of Digital reproduction of "Development of a structural foam wall system for freeform fabrication of residential housing structures" J. Willard Marriott Library Special Collections TH7.5 2010 .M64
Rights Management © Samiullah Mohammed, To comply with copyright, the file for this work may be restricted to The University of Utah campus libraries pending author permission.
Format Medium application/pdf
Format Extent 114,201 bytes
Identifier us-etd2,155592
Source Original: University of Utah J. Willard Marriott Library Special Collections
Conversion Specifications Original scanned on Epson GT-30000 as 400 dpi to pdf using ABBYY FineReader 9.0 Professional Edition.
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Setname ir_etd
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Reference URL https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s66m3nfd