Designing with Glued Wood Construction

The author stresses the development of structures made up of large modular interstices out of structures of very small modular interstices. The cinergistic principle is used by Fuller in the design of structures. This is the combined effective action of every unit of a system. Early experimentation with triangular and tetrahedron-type of construction led to further structural experiments and structures which will enclose usable volumes in such a manner as to withstand all the stresses the structure will receive and doing so with as little as 1/300 of the weight of materials that are normally used for such structures. The structural experiments are not made up from drawings but are designed from points of control of systems and in stresses that occur between these points which will be required to give effective service. The Ford Motor Company’s dome in Dearborn, Mich, has 93 feet of clear span, and it was put in place at a weight of only 17,000 pounds. This was 1/29 the weight of any dome that could be built by conventional steel radial arch frames. This dome was made with aluminum sheet struts. A later experimental design was a 30-foot experimental dome installed at Yale University made up of paperboard with a phenolic resin content of 20 percent. The difficulty in obtaining phenolic resin-impregnated fiberboard necessitated the use of untreated fiberboard which was coated with polyester resin. The advantage of this type of material was that the polyester-treated fiberboard paper forms could be left in the structure changing the normal concept of production and construction. Leaving the fiberboard forms in place also added to the strength and increased the ease of construction. The new principle of construction with the low weight per square foot interested the military from the standpoint of base housing which might have promise as far as portability and movement of the structures. Further experimentation with corrugated paperboard and polyester resin led to the development of a 36-foot dome for the Marine Corps at Cornell University. It is covered with a polyester-coated waterproof fiberboard, of the V series. Further work using the same principles is being done at Princeton, University of Minnesota, Tulane, University of Virginia, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Students at these universities are working directly with the resins making the structures themselves. Experimental structures were also made with Mylar-covered dome at Woodhold, Mass.

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