According to the equation of force, the intensity of an earthquake varies directly with the mass of the building. Commonly, RC structural components tend to be designed, or constructed, bigger and heavier than necessary. This structural over-engineering or massiveness provokes the building overweight making it an unsafe structure due to the current seismic hazard.

Reinforced concrete inefficient use generates material debris and energy waste in addition to the building structural vulnerability. To Wilfredo, inefficiency becomes both an unsafe and unsustainable practice. For his thesis he uses the human body’s structural system composed by bones and muscles to optimize the design parameters for RC structural system. With the principles defined in his thesis, Wilfredo is proposing the evolution of the current and inefficient structural system. The design of the novel structural system was based in the parameters of morphology adaptation of human bones. The system named as STICK.S or the Stick System, as a reference to a lightweight structural system, employs the femur as the adaptation model for columns and beams.

The femur is the strongest human bone and its hollow cylinder design provides maximum strength with minimum weight. Those essential features represent ideal parameters for the reduction of earthquake intensity on a building structure. In addition, the bone’s anatomy reflects the common stresses it encounters in order to adapt its morphology to its common mechanical stress. In order to achieve the bio-structural adaptation, STICK.S used hollow-shaft columns and beams whose morphology was adapted to its bending moment diagram. The resulting non-prismatic form helps the proposed frame to respond better than conventional prismatic frame to the lateral loads normally produced during an earthquake. At the other hand, the hollow-shaft parameter serves to reduce about 30 percent of reinforced concrete by structural component.

STICK.S becomes a custom Special Moment Resisting Frame (SMRF). Like the bones in the human skeleton, each column and beam are precisely designed according to its specific load condition and its own bending moment diagram. The hollow-shaft parameter reduces about 0.32 cubic meters (11.18 ft3) of reinforced concrete, besides it reduces 761 kg and up to 118 lbs of CO2 by structural component (column or beam). Also, because the RC frame is adapted to its common stresses by lateral loads, the deflection was greatly reduced in comparison with a conventional RC frame under same load conditions.

The form, as the result of the diagram of force, directly abstracted from the bones morphology paradigm, makes the proposed frame almost 3 times stiffer than a conventional one. In further analysis, the frame base shear (seismic intensity) was greatly reduced by 35 percent.

In conclusion, because of the human skeleton parameters were adapted to the conventional structure system, which encourages the efficient concrete utilization and the building weight reduction, the building seismic vulnerability was significantly reduced, increasing its adaptation to the site characteristics. Adaptation reflects in efficiency which becomes the key to better structural performance and the building relevant sustainable output.

For more details see the metatectonica blogspot

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