Abstract
Recent developments in the field of materials engineering have allowed for the use of natural materials for common structural elements, instead of traditional materials, such as steel or concrete. In this context, hemp is a very interesting material for structural building design. This paper proposes the use of hemp cables for roofs with hyperbolic paraboloid cable nets, which sees the use of a sustainable material for structure, thus having a very low environmental impact, in terms of structural thickness and amount of material. The paper discusses five different plan sizes and two different hyperbolic paraboloid surface radius of curvatures. The cable traction, which gives the cable net stiffness, was varied in order to give a parametric database of structural response. Three dimensional geometrically nonlinear analyses were carried out on different geometries (i.e., 10), cable net stiffnesses (i.e., 8), and materials (i.e., 2). Traditional harmonic steel and hemp cables are compared, in terms of vertical displacements and natural periods under dead and permanent loads.
Highlights
Hemp is the same plant as marijuana, and its scientific name is Cannabis sativa
The comparison shows that masses for hemp cable net are, as was expected, less than steel
Static and modal analyses results have shown that the vertical displacements under dead and permanent loads (i.e., 0.5 kN/m2 ) vary nonlinearly as a function of load-bearing cable traction (T1 ) for both harmonic steel and hemp cable nets
Summary
Hemp is the same plant as marijuana, and its scientific name is Cannabis sativa. For thousands of years, hemp was used to make dozens of commercial products, like paper, rope, canvas, and textiles. The use of hemp, which is usually cheaper than harmonic steel, may improve cable net diffusion in favor of a cost–benefit balance for structures, and is convenient for covering large spans for both temporary or permanent conditions. It is commonly used for sport arenas, but recent studies have shown that they can be used for music halls [12,13]. This study is only focused on the structural response under structural weight and
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