Reliable Design of Adaptive Load-Bearing Structures with Focus on Sustainability

Nowadays large amounts of raw materials are used in the building industry. Conventional design methods for passive constructions are at the limit of what’s permissible according to standard and oversized for most of their design life. In order to reduce the consumption of raw material and the environmental impact caused by its production, an actuation of the load-bearing structure is a possible way forward. Such a structure is able to adapt to different load cases by specifically manipulating internal stresses using actuators installed in the structure. This paper introduces a design procedure applied to an adaptive high-rise load-bearing structure demonstrating reliability and includes the changing environmental impact. The trade-off between oversizing, which leads to high reliability and savings of raw material for minimal environmental impact needs to be solved for unique structures with quantity one. By use of a linear-elastic model the effect of wind loads is simulated and actuator forces and tensions were calculated. In the total balance the energy consumption of the actuators and its related greenhouse gas emissions as well as the intended savings due to the reduced need for raw materials in production is included. In conclusion, replacing building material with energy can be a promising way forward on the condition, that electric energy will become increasingly environmentally friendly in the near future, whereas natural resources for materials are limited.