Master's Thesis- Structures as Emergency Shelters

Thesis

ABSTRACT Shelter is a place for people to stay in temporarily when they cannot live in their previous residence for any reasons, similar to homeless shelters. The main difference is that an emergency shelter typically works for more than one situation, such as natural or man-made disasters, domestic violence. A more minor difference is that people staying in emergency shelters are more likely to stay all day, except for work, school, or errands, while homeless shelters usually expect people to stay elsewhere during the day, returning only to sleep or to rest. The purpose of this research is to introduce a discrete paradigm for developable structural surface as an emergency shelters by providing a structural design as a solution to face the lack of shelters due to the natural disasters, humanitarian disasters and diseases by proposing a comparison of two structural designs; x scissors structures and bending active structures. CONCLUSION In this short thesis, modularity gives the flexibility of extending the design as per site conditions. Also gives more opportunity for applications to take place like, isolation units, housing and classrooms (Fig.12) (Fig.13) (Fig.14). In terms of inertia, rectangular section has a better inertia than cylindrical for active bending structures; its assemblage is simpler and requires less construction parts. It is also easier to deploy and construct. Finally, Polymers like Glass fiber have an excellent performance for this kind of torsion and bending structure due to its fibrous inner structure. For further work, exploring more opportunities of different materials, spans, applications and the cost of every detail provided.