Building Design Example

In the last few years thin film designs have been marketed to cover roofs of buildings. For example, Uni-Solar laminates were used by GM in a 1 mW installation in Rancho Cucamonga, California. 

Some building design issues should also be addressed through research and further discussion. For example, the use of roof-mounted heat and smoke vents, mechanical roof exhaust systems, and plastic skylight domes in combination with sprinkler systems are still being debated and has not been subjected to large-scale fire tests. 

There is also an opportunity to use fibre ropes as tension textiles in buildings. An example is a bus station in Cambridge, UK (Fig. 13.25), erected in 1991. The structure was designed with four masts, each with a pair of forestays and back stays to support the 7-metre cantilevered roof. The stays are made of Parafil ropes with a Kevlar core their function is primarily to resist snow loading, but they are permanently stressed to... 

Diagrams exist for the preventive evaluation of the possible damage to various structures, drawn on the basis of experimental and theoretical data. As an example, a reinforced concrete office building, designed to resist an earthquake, can be severely damaged by a 1 Mt explosion up to about 10 km distant. 

The era of the hospital began in the twelfth century when the sick were to be housed in separate buildings designed for medical care. Examples include St. Bartholomew s Hospital (London, AJ>. 1123) and St. Thomas Hospital (London, A.D. 1200). Both hospitals are in service today, having been refounded in the mid-1500s due to the dissolution of the monasteries in England in AI>. 1536. 

The principal aim of explosion/blast design is the safety of personnel and avoidance of damage to equipment by ensuring that the structure does not collapse. In particular cases, blast-resistance of buildings for example, an additional aim is actually to protect personnel and equipment from injury or blast damage, which would not be the case with an open platform and equipment support structure. 

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