Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
  • Publication
    Mechanical behaviour and 3D stress analysis of multi-layered wooden beams made with welded-through wood dowels
    This paper presents experimental and numerical investigations on multi-layered timber beams using welded-through wood dowels in place of traditional poly(vinyl acetate) (PVAc)-adhesives (or metallic nails). Four-layer beams were constructed with varying numbers of dowels, in each, and then loaded using four-points bending tests to evaluate the mechanical performance of these beams. The practical difficulties encountered in constructing deeper multi-layer beams are discussed and possible solutions which have been employed for the purpose of this work, and proved successful are presented. In order to investigate thoroughly the full potential of multi-layered beams with a very limited number of experimental studies, a 3D FE model has been presented, validated against experimental results and then used to study some influential parameters. The results showed that a reasonable bending stiffness of multi-layered beams is achievable with a good combination of material and geometric parameters.
    Scopus© Citations 72  1296
  • Publication
    Living in the clouds: conceptual reconstructions of harbour structures
    (Emerald, 2018-02)
    The harbours of Ireland, under threat from deterioration and rising sea levels, are being documented using terrestrial LiDAR augmented by archival research to develop comprehensive histories and timeline models for public dissemination. While methods to extract legible three-dimensional models from scan data have been developed and such operational formats for heritage management are imperative, the need for this format in interpretive visualisations should be reconsidered. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach: Interpretive visualisations are forms of history making, where factual evidence is drawn together with conjecture to illustrate a plausible account of events, and differentiation between fact and conjecture is the key to their intellectual transparency. A procedure for superimposing conjectural reconstructions, generated using Rhinoceros and CloudCompare, on original scan data in Cyclone and visualised on a web-based viewer is discussed.Findings: Embellishing scan data with conjectural elements to visualise the evolution of harbours is advantageous for both research and public dissemination. The accuracy and density of the scans enables the interrogation of the harbour form and the irregular details, the latter in danger of generalisation if translated into parametric or mesh format. Equally, the ethereal quality of the point cloud conveys a sense of tentativeness, consistent with a provisional hypothesis. Finally, coding conjectural elements allows users to intuit the difference between fact and historical narrative. Originality/value: While various web-based point clouds viewers are used to disseminate research, the novelty here is the potential to develop didactic representations using point clouds that successfully capture a provisional thesis regarding each harbour’s evolution in an intellectually transparent manner to enable further inquiry.
    Scopus© Citations 1  522
  • Publication
    Experimental study of timber-to-timber composite beam using welded-through wood dowels
    This paper presents exploratory research related to novel full-scale multi-layered timber beams with composite action achieved with welded-through wood dowels. Different multi-layer beam designs, where the timber layers were interconnected with welded wood dowels providing interlayer shear resistance, were tested in bending with different dowel densities. The main originality of this study is the achievement of dowel welds through greater depths of sections than has previously proved possible. The practical difficulties encountered in constructing deeper multi-layer beams, and the successful solutions arrived at, are discussed. The significance of the research reported is the demonstrated ability to produce multilayered timber sections which are structurally efficient and do not require non timber based joining agents such as nails or adhesive.
      1329Scopus© Citations 46
  • Publication
    Weather Register
    This thematic study was run as a portion of the second term of design studies in a first professional Masters of Architecture degree program in Spring of 1998.
      182
  • Publication
    Evolutionary design using grammatical evolution and shape grammars : designing a shelter
    A new evolutionary design tool is presented, which uses shape grammars and a grammar-based form of evolutionary computation, grammatical evolution (GE). Shape grammars allow the user to specify possible forms, and GE allows forms to be iteratively selected, recombined and mutated: this is shown to be a powerful combination of techniques. The potential of GE and shape grammars for evolutionary design is examined by attempting to design a single-person shelter to be evaluated by collaborators from the University College Dublin School of Architecture, Landscape, and Engineering. The team was able to successfully generate conceptual shelter designs based on scrutiny from the collaborators. A number of avenues for future work are highlighted arising from the case study.
      1903
  • Publication
    Other notes on bounding
    (Architectural Association of Ireland, 2004)
    Banville writes as a fictional character looking for an elusive sense of security …from the world…but more perhaps from himself in the world. This need for distance suggests a psychological relationship between island culture and the need for definitive edges to mark one's territory. Does it then suggest that island dwellers would be lovers of bounded space? Perhaps, at a different scale, walled space? That the need to bound space is based on some cultural understanding, rooted in the physical nature of the land? Boundedness, the nature of boundary, the act of bounding is in fact an act of defining. In Banville's case the boundedness serves as a definition of the need for psychological distance. But boundaries can define many things and take various forms, many of which are not so very obvious as simple space. As for Banville's ghost.
      172
  • Publication
    Tactile Learning: The Making of an Attitude
    (Cork University Press, 2016-02-01)
    There is an interesting case in the history of dock building along the River Liffey that is illustrative of the relevance of one’s background in shaping one’s perceptual horizon and thus the manner in which the environment is attended to and the design process is undertaken. History documents that the acclaimed Scottish engineer John Rennie (1761 -1821) was author of the three docks built eastward of the Custom House in Dublin. This trio consists of the original dock, or Revenue Dock, completed 1796 (now in-filled), as well as George’ s Dock and the Inner Basin, both built by 1824. Yet the first dock was actually designed and constructed in tandem with the Custom House by James Gandon (1743 - 1823). Though this fact is clearly recorded by Mulvany in his biographical work on Gandon, and tentatively acknowledged much later by McParland, the record of citation evidence has slowly mutated across nearly two centuries to accommodate an altered perception of the increasingly specialized roles of engineer and architect. What is clear, from Rennie’s well kept business records, is that once awarded the contract to build the two additional docks and associated warehouses by the Commissioners of Custom and Excise in 1814, Rennie was in a position to assess the condition of the original Revenue Dock in late October of 1820 in an attempt to estimate the cause for its failure . Based on this assessment , three sides of this original dock in addition to its entrance channel were to be largely rebuilt, following Rennie’s untimely death in 1821, by resident engineer John Aird (1760 - 1832) under the supervision of Thomas Telford (1757 - 1834) by 1822. Presumably the subsequent rebuilding of substantial portions of the Revenue Dock are responsible for the muddied record of authorship. Regardless, there remains substantial documentation that attests to both Gandon’s role in the design of this first dock, as well as the significant differences between Rennie’s and Gandon ’s approach to the design of these structures.
      123
  • Publication
    An Equivocal Presence
    (Architectural Fieldwork, 2006-11)
    Littered in the tens of thousands across the Irish landscape, seemingly abandoned at random in farmer’s fields, are overgrown partially built figures of widely varying dimension known as faerie forts, or raths as the Irish would have it, which are compelling despite their ubiquity and obvious state of neglect. Now understood as defensive fortifications dating from 400-1000 AD, at least by academics, this very ordinary construction acquired an affiliation with the faeries, more properly referred to in Irish as the Tuatha dé Danaan, the people of the other world, in the medieval period. An association so enduring that it survives in contemporary Irish culture and compelling enough to ensure the continued presence of these artifacts. For though a handful of these structures have been excavated, rebuilt and preserved to be represented to the public, most tellingly the tourist population, the vast majority remain irrevocably entangled in the fabric of the common landscape pushing aside field boundaries, cultivation patterns and even road systems with their defiant presence.
      362