Sustainable Engineering Designs 2006
The following are senior design projects with an emphasis on sustainable engineering.
2006
Clay Brick Production in El Salvador Sustainable Cob House in Santa Cruz
Clay Brick Production in El Salvador
Edwin Cuellar, Juver Portillo, Mario Renderos, Francisco Vides
Advisors: Mark Aschheim and Jorge Gonzalez
Summary:
Fired clay bricks are a resonably inexpensive construction material in El Salvador. They are strong enough to support the loads generated by earthquakes and function well as a construction material, isolating houses from cold and hot weather, as well as the rain and wind in the winter.
The current process to create these bricks is very inefficient and has disadvantages for the country's ecology and sustainability. Harvesting the wood required to fire the bricks causes a lot of deforestation, while the firing process releases large amounts of greenhouse gases and airborne pollution.
The objective of this project is to design a new, more environmentally sustainable production method for the clay bricks. This involves firing the bricks at lower temperatures and for shorter time periods, which has a direct impact on the amount of firewood used in the process and the amount of greenhouse gas emitted. One of the techniques that is currently being tested has shown very promising results, producing stronger bricks than the traditional method.
Sustainable Cob House in Santa Cruz
Carl Bacon, Jacob Chu, Katie Cote
Advisor: Mark Aschheim
Summary:
The goal of this project was to create a cost-efficient, earth-friendly design which will provide a viable alternative to conventional building methods which have rising costs and harmful environmental impacts.
Cob is a composite building material, consisting of a mixture of clay, sand, straw, and water, that is hand-worked to form monolithic earthen walls. Cob construction does not require forms, bricks, ramming, or machinery. To further reduce environmental impacts, bamboo was incorporated as the primary building material in the roof plan. Water catchment systems and solar paneling were also considered.
One focus of this project was an evaluation of sustainability. On one hand, they evaluated the sustainability of the cob design, but on the other, they evaluated the suitability of the various current approaches for evaluating sustainability.
