Lighter Side of Construction

Fine Points of Friction

Cool Alumni

Dean's Digest

Printer-friendly version

Jeffrey Hunt's previous research was on the testing of corrugated metal sheer walls.

Heavy construction is too heavy. That's the underlying theme of UC Berkeley graduate student Jeffrey Hunt's research at the Lightweight Structures and Conceptual Design Institute in Stuttgart, Germany. Hunt is on a nine-month Fullbright fellowship at the Institute where he's studying how bridges, stadium roofs, and other large structures may be built smarter, stronger and with lower mass using fewer materials. He's exploring includes concrete shell structures, textile membrane roofs, and even moveable building components that take inspiration from the human body.

"We're trying to come up with creative, elegant solutions for problems that we've historically used too much material to solve," says Hunt, a second-year Civil and Environmental Engineering PhD candidate in the research group of professor Bozidar Stojadinovic.

The big idea, he explains, is to build "adaptive structures" that physically move in response to outside forces, from high winds against skyscrapers to big vehicles crossing a bridge. For example, a large truck driving across a bridge results in a moving load. Today's bridges are built to withstand that load across the entire structure all of the time. Someday though, a bridge's load-bearing capabilities might literally follow the truck across the bridge.

Stuttgart's Gottlieb Daimler Stadium features a textile membrane roof designed by researchers at the Institute for Lightweight Structures and Conceptual Design. (courtesy Gabriela Metzger/Institut für Leichtbau Entwerfen und Konstruieren)

Such adaptive structures would be instrumented with sensors to keep a constant vigil on the location and amount of load. A computer could then use that data in the control of actuators that would, say, shorten or lengthen individual members or constructive components or alter rigidity as needed.

The Killesbergturm, a 42 meter tall, cable-supported observation tower in Stuttgart, features innovations from the Institute for Lightweight Structures and Conceptual Design. (courtesy Gabriela Metzger/Institut für Leichtbau Entwerfen und Konstruieren)

"In the human body, muscles redistribute the force within your skeleton so you can adapt to different situations," Hunt says. "In an adaptive bridge, the actuators act as the muscles to counteract the force and homogenize the distribution of stress across the structure. So the bridge can have less mass with no wasted materials."

The lightweight structures also draw from advances in new materials. For example, the Gottlieb Daimler Stadium in Stuttgart, designed by professors at the Institute, is capped with a roof formed from textile membrane stretched over a web of pre-stressed cables. In other projects, the researchers are also exploring novel applications for superlight high-performance concrete like domes covering massive exhibit halls. The state-of-the-art materials, combined with the adaptive structure technology, could lead to entirely new forms of architecture not previously possible.

Do you have a comment or question regarding this research? We want to hear from you...

In August, Hunt will return to Berkeley armed with the insights gained in Stuttgart. His plan is to write a report on his findings to share with his Berkeley colleagues and also incorporate into his thesis. Right now, his research topic is still to be determined but he hopes to continue exploring the intersection of architecture and structural engineering.

"This research is exciting because we're taking elements from nature and bringing them into structural systems," Hunt says. "Elevators and escalators move people within buildings, but we don't really have a structural system yet that actually moves the building itself."

"Jeffrey Hunt Awarded 2006-2007 Fulbright Fellowship" (CEE News & Events, June 13, 2006)

Institute for Lightweight Structures and Conceptual Design (ILEK)

Bozidar Stojadinovic's home page

Lab Notes is published online by the Marketing and Communications Office of the UC Berkeley College of Engineering. The Lab Notes mission is to illuminate groundbreaking research underway today at the College of Engineering that will dramatically change our lives tomorrow.

Media contact: Teresa Moore, Executive Director of Marketing and Communications
Writers, Researchers: David Pescovitz & Paul Spinrad
Web Manager: Michele Foley

Subscribe or send comments to the Engineering Marketing and Communications Office: lab-notes@coe.berkeley.edu.

© 2006 UC Regents.