(onsite and online)

Join Zoom Meeting

https://hku.zoom.us/j/98881411844?pwd=6xSKWiftNI96KpShsWThZ3p5bxrAmV.1

Meeting ID: 988 8141 1844

Password: 840740

Abstract:

A 1960s plan to cover midtown Manhattan with a giant geodesic dome was proposed by future-thinking genius engineer/utopian Buckminster Fuller, but due to the limitations on technology at those times, this plan kept standstill. While based on the context of global warming in recent years, a new proposal in dealing with the regions of extreme hot weather to build a kilometer-scale large span dome as shelter was addressed. To fulfill the functional facilities inside of the dome environment, it is fundamental to design a large-span structure dome in kilo-meter scale as the boundary of inner and outer space. Even though there had been many successful practices of geodesic domes design and construction like Montreal Biosphere in Canada, Tacoma Dome in Tacoma, Washington and so forth, but there has no such kind of geodesic dome in kilos-meter scale. We are going to design a large hemispherical dome to house a town of 1 - 2 million people. This is a preliminary design of a 100m diameter doom as a pilot scheme to assess the structural feasibility of a much larger dome of 1km to 2km in diameter. As we have no knowledge in the number of layers needed, a 3-layer dome will be used as a trial run. Hollow Circular Steel sections will be used. Dead Load (DL), Live Load (LL) and Wind Load (WL) will be considered according to the Eurocode and then 3 different loading cases will be imposed on the whole structure. Besides, to model this complex muti-layer of dome with more than 10,000 nodes and around 40,000 elements, the Ansys Parametric Design Language (APDL) software will be used for simulation based on finite element method (FEM).

ALL INTERESTED ARE WELCOME