Figure 1 - uploaded by Alireza Behnejad
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A geodesic dome with glass cladding having around 40 m span designed and constructed by ArchiVision Company in Mashhad, Iran 1 .
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Engineering students, usually, show a greater interest in topics which are demonstrated physically rather than those that are explained using the so called ‘chalk and talk’ methods, that is, by oral presentations and blackboard/whiteboard/OHP. Also, students are motivated by hands-on experience and by linking concepts and physical models to real en...
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... Author, as a practicing architect and the director of an architectural firm, has been involved in the design and construction of around 150 'Spatial Structures' in different projects since 1999. An example of these projects is a 40 metre span geodesic dome shown in Figure 1. Also, to maintain the relationship between the industry and academia, a series of 1- 3 day courses on design and construction of spatial structures was organised by the Author in different universities. ...
Citations
... Phase one of the project sees the students in groups to design a full-scale steel spatial structure and prepare all the necessary documents for construction, including technical drawings, a list of requirements, method statements and risk assessments. In the second phase, each group is given the set of documents prepared by another group during phase one to assemble and dismantle the designed structure within a two hour time limit (Behnejad, 2016). The project incorporates international collaboration between first-year civil engineering students at the University of Surrey and civil engineering and architecture students in the 7th and 8th semester of their degrees at ITESO -University of Guadalajara (Mexico) with architecture students at the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (Iran). ...
The Design, Assemble and Dismantle (DAD) project is a two-phase hands-on scheme developed at the University of Surrey in 2014 suitable for civil engineering and architecture students. Phase one of the project sees the students in groups to design a full-scale steel spatial structure and prepare all the necessary documents for construction, including technical drawings, a list of requirements, method statements and risk assessments. In the second phase, each group is given the set of documents prepared by another group during phase one to assemble and dismantle the designed structure within a two hour time limit (Behnejad, 2016). The project incorporates international collaboration between first-year civil engineering students at the University of Surrey and civil engineering and architecture students in the 7th and 8th semester of their degrees at ITESO-University of Guadalajara (Mexico) with architecture students at the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad (Iran). This student-staff collaborative paper explores different aspects of the international collaboration within the DAD project including the challenges it presents, the professional skills it develops and the lessons it instils in both lecturers and students. The main aim of this paper is to explore the contributions of such collaborations in achieving the dynamic concept of teaching excellence in higher education. Excellence in teaching is often identified by a judgement made about performance, the effectiveness of which is perceived by both the experience and training of lecturers as well as the students' experience. During a partnership between the Authors of the present chapter, Ramsha Saleem and Dr. Alireza Behnejad, the founder of the DAD project, worked closely to develop a research that would allow them to effectively explore teaching excellence in higher education, focusing on the international collaborations on the DAD Project. In what follows, Ramsha narrates the research outcome. I am a third-year civil engineering undergraduate student at the University of Surrey. I was one of the student group managers in the 2018 DAD project. Over the course of the past few months, I conducted interviews with the three lecturers responsible for delivering the DAD project across the three universities: Dr. Behnejad from the University of Surrey, Dr. Nayar Gutierrez from the University of Guadalajara and Mr. Armin Mottaghi Rad from the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad. The discussions were both thought-provoking and eye-opening; they allowed me to appreciate the project and collaboration from both a lecturer's and a professional's perspective and not just that of a student. During the project, I was in a group of eight students. All groups from the University of Surrey had between five to eight students, all in the first year of their degree. There were eight groups from the University of Surrey, two groups from the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad and one group from the University of Guadalajara in collaboration. Most of the groups from the University of Surrey collaborated with each other-only three groups worked with international students.
This chapter explores different aspects of international collaborations within the Design, Assemble and Dismantle (DAD) project, including the challenges it presents, the professional skills it develops and the lessons it instils in both lecturers and students. The main aim of the present work was to explore the contributions of such collaborations in achieving the dynamic concept of teaching excellence in Civil Engineering. The authors worked closely to identify and discuss the benefits of international educational collaborations for architecture and civil engineering students. This was to effectively explore teaching excellence in Civil Engineering, focusing on the international collaborations on the DAD Project. Key elements of such collaborations were identified in parallel discussion with the lecturers from all three universities involved in the collaboration.
Dealing with geometrical information has been an important aspect of the knowledge required for construction of a structure. In particular, data generation techniques appropriate for complex geometries are crucial for the design and construction of spatial structures. This may be referred to as ‘Configuration Processing’ and has been the centre of attention for some researchers in the past few decades. A main focus of this thesis is the ‘regularity’ in structural forms and the present research shows that the ‘metric properties’ of structural forms, suggested by the Author, are fundamental for the study of regularity. Metric properties refer to the geometrical information necessary for design, and in particular, construction of lattice spatial structures. To elaborate, the research addresses the following questions: • What are the metric properties for a lattice structure and how can these be evaluated? • What is the definition of regularity for lattice structures and how can this be quantified? • How could the regularity of a lattice structure be improved? The Author is an architect and structural engineer who has been involved in the design and construction of lattice spatial structures for 20 years. The experience of the actual construction over the years has shown that there are advantages in keeping the number of different types of structural components small. In another front, the study of regularity of forms for lattice structures may involve the ‘visual aspects’, ‘arrangements of elements’ or ‘structural components’. The first two aspects are subjective matters and the latter one, that is the focus of the present work, is an objective matter. The present research shows that the metric properties of structural forms are fundamental for the study of component regularity. There are considerable benefits in terms of the construction of structures which have a high degree of regular components. The benefits include savings in time and cost of construction, as well as a reduction in probability of having a wrong arrangement during assembly. In this sense, the present work could be considered as a research of fundamental importance which provides a basis for the knowledge in this field. Most of the examples in the Thesis are single layer lattice structures with straight elements and further research on other types of lattice structures is recommended. This thesis consists of six chapters, the first of which entitled ‘Introduction’ provides background information about the research and discusses the research aims. Chapter 2 on the ‘Literature Review’ concerns the few available publications relevant to the research. The third chapter entitled ‘Metric Properties’ defines a number of geometrical parameters which are being used to generate the geometrical information. Also, the mathematics involved for the necessary calculations are discussed. This chapter is a major contribution of the thesis and to the available knowledge in terms of introduction a set of well defined geometrical parameters for design and construction of lattice spatial structures. Chapter 4 is dedicated to discussion of different aspects of ‘Regularity’ of lattice structures. To begin with, the idea of regularity is elaborated upon and then the concept of ‘regularity indicators’ are discussed. These indicators help to quantify regularity of components. Here again, this chapter presents a novel idea in the field of lattice spatial structures. Another major contribution of this thesis to the general knowledge is Chapter 5 entitled ‘Sphere Packing’. This is a particular technique for configuration processing developed by the Author to improve the member length regularity of lattice structures. An example of the application of the technique for configuration processing of spherical domes is also discussed in details. Moreover, a comparison on the variation of the member lengths of different dome configurations is discussed which shows that around 50% of the members of a dome created by sphere packing technique are with the same length. This proportion of equal length members is considerably higher than that of the other dome configurations (10%-33%). Finally, Chapter 6 provides the conclusions and some important suggestions for the continuation of the research. In addition to the main body of this thesis, copy of the relevant publications by the Author are provided as Annexes in the following three categories: i. Geometrical data generation for lattice spatial structures is the core of the Annexes A to E, then, ii. Annexes F and G are focusing on the education of spatial structures, and finally, iii. Historical background of spatial structures is discussed in the Annexes H and I.
