The radio silence over the last few months has not been down to lack of progress!
Like a swan, the aparent inactivity above the surface masks some frenetic paddling – and I’m pleased to be able to share the fruits of that effort. Over the last six weeks, a Paper Project installation has been in residence at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, as part of the ‘Future of Building’ Exhibition which I put together with some great collaborators in Birmingham. The Exhibition itself is moving location soon, as it completes its run, but more details on where to see it will follow.
In the meantime, the following photos should give a sense of what’s been going on…
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June 23, 2010 at 10:50 am
I wonder whether this could be exhibited at the IABSE Symposium in London in 2011, or perhaps in the lobbies of IStructE or ICE before then?
June 24, 2010 at 3:36 pm
That’s a really nice idea. I do a lot of work with ICE in the West Midlands, and it’s through their ambassadors program that I’ve been able to take it into schools. Regionally we’ve had a few discussions about getting it to conferences, but it hasn’t quite had the impetus to get there (running this in between ‘real’ work means I don’t have the resources to push this as much as I’d like!). Perhaps this year…
I don’t have any connections with IABSE (although I just had a good browse around their website) – any suggestions?
The structure’s a great talking point with structural engineers – The arch is a useful vocabulary for talking to the public, but it is – of course! – essentially a beam. You quite quickly get into discussions about creep (of the paper and connections) and post-tensioning of the intrados to reduce spread. I’ve seen some revelatory moments amongst recently graduated structural engineers when they crush a paper tube axially and declare ‘so *that’s* what Euler buckling was all about!’
June 25, 2010 at 10:57 am
I have several contacts in IABSE and will raise the idea if I get a chance.
Isn’t failure of an axially-loaded paper tube principally due to local buckling in the slender wall, and/or its lack of plastic capacity?
July 5, 2010 at 8:07 am
It certainly is when the tube is rolled with thin walls – rolled tightly enough it becomes essentially solid and can be used to demonstrate Euler buckling modes. The distinction between the two, and the way the failure mode changes from one to the other inbetween the two idealised models is a pretty useful lesson in itself.