Document structure
Pablo's Final Project

Pablo's Final Project

Smart Timber Construction Autonomous Pannel

(1) Problem Statement

Timber structures have benefits such as:

  • Low carbon footprint.
  • Ease to be recycled, reused and dissassembled.
  • Organic and warm aesthetics.
  • Good thermal issolation properties.
  • Lightweight.

However timber also has disadvantages as construction material:

  • It is combustible, i.e. burns with fire.
  • It has low thermal inertia and acoustic insultion (i.e. timber structures tend to getting cold and warm rapidly and do not insulate noise very well).
  • It has limited durability and dimensional stability, i.e. vulnerability to xylophagous organisms and moisture.

(2) Project Hypothesis

My project’s main hypothesis is that timber main disadvantages (i.e. combustibility, low thermal inertia, acoustics, durability and dimensional stability) can be minimized developing a smart pannelized wall system that includes energy generation, automatized temperature regulation, and hydrogel protection. This assumption is based on the fact that hydrogel has high mass (thus it has the potential to increase thermal inertia), low combustibility and high heat capacity, and high durability. Also, it is assumed that it is possible to create an autonomous system that can generate energy, measuring temperature and automatizing heating and cooling.

(3) Proposed solution

Based on my hypothesis, I want to fabricate a composite timber pannel that minimizes the timber main disadvantages as construction material and can be used to develop more environmentally friendly construction systems. I termed that pannel as

Smart Timber Construction Autonomous Pannel

Here I show some initial drafts of the idea including the main parts of the proposed system

For ceating that pannel, I will need to:

  • Design and fabricate with robotic arm/CNC cutting a timber panel frame.
  • Design and fabricate the hydrogel sustrate and encapsulating recipient.
  • Design and fabricate a solar energy generation system.
  • Design and fabricate the electronics/sensors that will serve to monitorize temperature and automatize heating and cooling.
  • Integrate all the above and deliver that as a compact final project item.

Description of how it works and data monitoring

The pannel is expected to work as a very energy efficient fassade element of a building, so that it will apply the principles of a trombe wall but in a completely autonomous and automatic way. Here you can see an explanation of the Trombe wall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trombe_wall but I summarize the main principles in the following. The principle of the Trombe wall is adding a glass or similar mat promotting strong radiation of sunlight in the outer layer of a fassade element to generate radiation of heat and with this promote the air ventilation in the fassade (the hotter air flows upwars). This air flow is allowed via gates in the upper and lower part of the wall so that, when necessary (hot temperatures in the outside) the air flow is permitted generating natural ventilation. The air cavity is sided inwards with a material of strong thermal inertia (hydrogel in my case) so that, appart from the air flow ventilation, many heat can be stored in the wall. Alltogether, this allows for minimizing the energy required in cooling during summers. On the other hand, when temperature is cold in the outside, the air flow is not permited and the air cavity acts as a thermal insulation, but stil, the radiation caused by the glass maximizes the possitive effect of winter sun, which along with the strong thermal inertia of the inner part allows for maximizing radiation, thermal insulation and large thermal difference between in and outside. Therfore, also offering notable benefits in reducing energy consumption during cold days. My proposal of final project, aims at generating such wall behaviour but in a completely automatized and autonomous way. The idea is sensoring the temperature in the air cavity, and probably also the moisture so that it also can be regulated as dessired, and automatize the opening/closing of the gates with servocontrollers. Here you can see an schematic of the monitoring and working draft idea.

Update from March 2025

I further worked in the parametric design of my final project to approach to the final parametric desing (at least from the pannel skeleton itself) reaching out this design in Grasshopper/Rhino

After that I created a DXF of the countour polylines for exporting to VCarve and thus CNC machining, here you can see the result after machining some pieces:

Here you can see me working in the assembling of the pieces of my panel:

And here you can see the first draft of prototype skeleton as for March 2025 in the lab