The energy transition in Germany, Europe, and across the world is driving robust demand for solar panels. Alongside high energy yields, aesthetics and acceptance are also increasingly important factors. To accommodate these trends, a team of researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE has developed an innovative solar facade element that can be incorporated into a building’s exterior practically invisibly and without any significant loss of efficiency. With the development of MorphoColor® coating technology, the experts have…
Researchers at KIT develop a transparent metamaterial for energy-efficient light and temperature regulation in buildings. Maximizing natural light in buildings is popular and can save on energy costs. However, traditional glass roofs and walls also present problems such as glare, lack of privacy, and overheating. Alternative solutions, such as coatings and light-diffusing materials, have not yet provided a comprehensive remedy. New Material Combines Multiple Functions Researchers at the Institute for Microstructure Technology (IMT) and the Light Technology Institute (LTI) at…
Wood, we come into close contact with it daily. Children play around on wood floors, and wood furniture plays an important role in our work and sleep habits as well. To keep this natural material from aging prematurely, it’s important to protect it against ultraviolet (UV) radiation. At the same time, people want to retain the look and feel of wooden surfaces, but the protective coatings that are currently available often contain harmful chemical compounds. To avoid using these substances,…
…are set to revolutionise the construction world. Using bio-based and bio-degradable, recyclable insulation textiles to sustainably insulate heat and reduce energy consumption and the carbon footprint – the Aachen-based start-up SA-Dynamics has developed a solution for this dream of many building owners together with industrial partners. SA-Dynamics won the second Innovation Award in the “New Technologies on Sustainability & Recycling” cate-gory at the leading textile trade fairs Techtextil https://techtextil.messefrankfurt.com/frankfurt/en.html and Texprocess https://www.expobeds.com/event/texprocess for this development. The bio-based recyclable insulation textiles…
– software automatically designs and optimises drainage systems. Germany provides a well-developed infrastructure with sewer networks and wastewater treatment plants to collect rainwater and wastewater. In developing countries, however, such infrastructure is very often not in place. A Kaiserslautern start-up has developed a solution: They offer software that automatically designs and optimises sustainable drainage systems. The technology also takes into account the blue-green infrastructure, i.e. possible water reservoirs and technical measures for the infiltration and evaporation of rainwater. As such,…
– Fraunhofer WKI advises on bonding. For the company Modvion AB in Gothenburg, researchers from the Fraunhofer WKI accompanied the bonding of the first wooden tower for commercial wind turbines on the construction site and advised the company on complex bonding processes. The so-called “Wind of Change Tower” of the energy provider Varberg Energi AB was inaugurated on 4 March 2024. Including a V90-2.0MW turbine from Vestas Group, the tower reaches a total height of 150 metres (pure tower height…
New method for testing the structural integrity of buildings. Building inspection benefits from laser-based measuring systems providing quick and accurate digital measurement data. Laser scanners are already being used to measure building geometries or to detect surface damage. In the future, lasers will help detect subsurface damage, too. Up until now, the only way of detecting hidden defects was the so-called impact hammer test. When it comes to assessing the condition of a building, visual inspections are still widely used….
Scrap aluminum transforms recycling life cycle. Energy savings approaching 90 percent expected from employing entirely post-consumer aluminum to make high-grade building components. The circular economy just closed the loop on scrap aluminum, thanks to a new patent-pending technology developed at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. That twisted aluminum mesh, those banged up bicycle frames, and the used car parts now languishing in junk yards could gain new life as building structures such as door and window frames,…
Our built environment is aging and failing faster than we can maintain it. Recent building collapses and structural failures of roads and bridges are indicators of a problem that’s likely to get worse, according to experts, because it’s just not possible to inspect every crack, creak and crumble to parse dangerous signs of failure from normal wear and tear. In hopes of playing catch-up, researchers in Drexel University’s College of Engineering are trying to give robotic assistants the tools to…
Residue-free and sustainable removal of contaminants. In Germany, there are around three million buildings that are contaminated with the toxic wood preservatives lindane and pentachlorophenol (PCP). Previous measures for minimizing contamination include insulating contaminated areas or disposing of treated wooden building materials as hazardous waste. However, these measures are neither sustainable nor cost-efficient. In the CycloPlasma project, researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics IBP are developing a new type of process to remove these decades-old contaminants — in…
Drexel University’s ‘BioFiber’ can stabilize and heal damaged concrete. In hopes of producing concrete structures that can repair their cracks, researchers from Drexel University’s College of Engineering are putting a new twist on an old trick for improving the durability of concrete. Fiber reinforcement has been around since the first masons were mixing horsehair into their mud. But the Drexel research team is taking this method to the next level by turning reinforcing fibers into a living tissue system that…
ETH Zurich researchers deployed an autonomous excavator, called HEAP, to build a six metre-high and sixty-five-metre-long dry-stone wall. The wall is embedded in a digitally planned and autonomously excavated landscape and park. The team of researchers included: Gramazio Kohler Research, the Robotics Systems Lab, Vision for Robotics Lab, and the Chair of Landscape Architecture. They developed this innovative design application as part of the National Centre of Competence in Research for Digital Fabrication (NCCR dfab). Using sensors, the excavator can…
Textiles are a given in civil engineering: they stabilize water protection dams, facilitate the revegetation of slopes at risk of erosion, and even make asphalt layers of roads thinner. Until now, textiles made of highly resistant synthetic fibers have been used for this purpose, which have a very long lifetime. For some applications, it would not only be sufficient but even desirable for the auxiliary textile to degrade in the soil when it has done its job. Environmentally friendly natural…
Components released from facade materials… The plaster and mortar used in facades often contain heavy metals and biocides that leach out and infiltrate into the soil when it rains. The Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics IBP has created a model that combines measurements of the substances that leach out with regional meteorological data. This creates a precise forecast that can be used at the planning stage to determine the type and amount of substances that could be released from facade…
PALM-4U: urban planning for climate change. As climate change progresses, extreme weather events such as prolonged hot spells, storms and heavy rain are occurring ever more frequently, and cities are feeling the strain. The new urban climate model PALM-4U will allow municipal staff and city planners to simulate the effects of their planned construction projects on the urban climate, so that they can gauge the consequences of extreme weather events before they happen, improve quality of life in urban areas…
Porous media such as concrete represent a spherical packing of different components. The mechanical properties of such mixtures are difficult to calculate due to their discretized nature. A team led by Prof. Holger Steeb (University of Stuttgart) and Prof. Stefan Luding (University of Twente, The Netherlands) has now been able to investigate an unexpected property of mixtures of granular media consisting of soft and stiff spherical particles. They used a combination of ultrasound investigating and X-ray computed tomographic imaging, allowing…
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