Cheese bell

Abstract

A building manager of a small monument in Alkmaar wants to give the monument a new function as a restaurant. His idea is to place a glass structure over his monument, like a huge cheese bell, in Alkmaar as a famous cheese city. The main question that is central in this research is: “How can a full glass dome structure be built, to cover ‘Het Kruithuisje’ in Alkmaar, The Netherlands, in which the thermal comfort is maintained in the most passive manner, without impeding the visual benefits of glass?”. To answer this question this research is divided into four parts: literature, designs, analysis and final design and conclusion. Various coarse designs will be made that will be analyzed. Based on the analyzed designs, a final design can be made in which the structural performance and thermal comfort are known. These results will lead to a design with building plans that can ultimately be built, with guidelines, recommendations and conclusions for possible upcoming similar structures. A dome structure, or a cupula structure, is a form of shell structures. A shell structure is a structure where the surface can bear the loads, because the surface is shaped and supported in a certain way (Flügge, 1973). Glass can be used as a construction material, but it has a number of properties as standard that are not entirely suitable for a construction material. To make glass a safer construction material and to give it a greater bearing capacity, it must be strengthened. The dome is a suitable shape for constructing glass structures because most of the internal dome forces are in compression. A shell structure can be built in as a completely smooth surface or built from various separate components. To build this entire construction, the shape must be divided into panels. To approximate the dome shape hot bended double curved panels will be used. To be able to build with glass, connections are needed between the various glass components. (Santarsiero et al., 2016). To achieve high transparency and low peak voltages, a combination of adhesive connections and dry assembly connections can be used. Designing with glass creates problems, especially for thermal comfort problems. These problems can be easily solved by using a lot of energy, which is not a sustainable solution. With passive strategies, a large part of this requested energy can be removed. In order to take away as much energy as possible in a passive manner, there must be compromised on transparency.