When choosing materials for a building project, the architect considers aspects relating to structural performance, functional requirements, and experience. In this studio, we chose Carbon fiber as our smart material to work with, well-known for its strength to weight ratio although it’s not widely used in architecture.To be implemented architecturally we decided to work with carbon fiber composite namely with epoxy resin and another lightweight natural fiber jute keeping in mind the feasibility of its economic value.
Our approach to the project was to investigate existing shell and tensile structure and design a geometry suitable for applications. The use of hyperbolic paraboloids as a form of thin shell construction for the following characteristics: Lightweight , efficient form was used as a means of minimizing materials, increasing structural performance and exceptional stiffness.
In present work, an attempt is made to hybridize the material using carbon fiber with natural fiber, jute, such that to reduce the overall use of synthetic reinforcement, to reduce the overall cost, and to enhance the mechanical properties.Experimental results revealed that hybridization of the composite with natural and synthetic fiber shows enhanced tensile strength, flexural strength, and impact strength. By replacing 35.8% carbon fibers with jute we ended up in reducing the overall cost by 34.2%.