Francesco Ranaudo


Last Name

Ranaudo

First Name

Francesco

ORCID

0000-0002-1612-5612

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2022 - 20245
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Publications 1 - 5 of 5
  • Unreinforced concrete masonry for circular construction
    Item type: Journal Article
    Bhooshan, Shajay; Dell'Endice, Alessandro; Ranaudo, Francesco; et al. (2024)
    Architectural Intelligence
    This paper proposes an effective approach to realise circular construction with concrete, and shows Unreinforced Masonry as a foundational building block for it. The paper outlines the importance of circularity in building structures. It specifically focuses on the impact of circular construction with concrete on improving the sustainability of the built environment in a rapidly urbanising world economy. Subsequently, the relevance of principles of structural design and construction of unreinforced masonry to achieve circularity is articulated. Furthermore, the paper presents and summarises recent developments in the field of Unreinforced Concrete Masonry (URCM) including digital design tools to synthesise structurally efficient shapes, and low-waste digital fabrication techniques using lower-embodied-emission materials to realise the designed shapes. The paper exemplifies these using two physically realised, full-scale URCM footbridge prototypes and a commercially available, mass-customisable building floor element, called the Rippmann Floor System (RFS). The paper also outlines the benefits of mainstream, industrial-scale adoption of the design and construction technologies for URCM, including accelerating the pathway to decarbonise the concrete industry. In summary, the paper argues that URCM provides a solution to significantly mitigate the carbon emissions associated with concrete and reduce the use of virgin resources whilst retaining its benefits such as widespread and cheap availability, endurance, fire safety, low maintenance requirements and recyclability.
  • Digitally fabricated ribbed concrete floor slabs: a sustainable solution for construction
    Item type: Journal Article
    Mata Falcón, Jaime; Bischof, Patrick; Huber, Tobias; et al. (2022)
    RILEM Technical Letters
    The concrete used in floor slabs accounts for large greenhouse gas emissions in building construction. Solid slabs, often used today, consume much more concrete than ribbed slabs built by pioneer structural engineers like Hennebique, Arcangeli and Nervi. The first part of this paper analyses the evolution of slab systems over the last century and their carbon footprint, highlighting that ribbed slabs have been abandoned mainly for the sake of construction time and cost efficiency. However, highly material-efficient two-way ribbed slabs are essential to reduce the environmental impact of construction. Hence, the second part of this paper discusses how digital fabrication can help to tackle this challenge and presents four concrete floor systems built with digitally fabricated formwork. The digital fabrication technologies employed to produce these slab systems are digital cutting, binder-jetting, polymer extrusion and 3D concrete printing. The presented applications showcase a reduction in concrete use of approximately 50% compared to solid slabs. However, the digitally fabricated complex formworks produced were wasteful and/or labour-intensive. Further developments are required to make the digital processes sustainable and competitive by streamlining the production, using low carbon concrete mixes as well as reusing and recycling the formwork or structurally activating stay-in-place formwork.
  • A computational design pipeline of 3D discrete-element assemblies in architecture
    Item type: Presentation
    Kao, Gene Ting-Chun; Ranaudo, Francesco; Iannuzzo, Antonino; et al. (2022)
  • A bio-based falsework system for the circular construction of shell structures
    Item type: Conference Paper
    Bitting, Selina; Ranaudo, Francesco; Menardo, Andrea; et al. (2024)
    Proceedings of IASS Annual Symposia ~ Proceedings of the IASS 2024 Symposium: Redefining the Art of Structural Design
    Ongoing research regarding the design of shells and spatial structures frequently focuses on the efficiency of the structure itself to reduce the amount of material required, but often, it negates the potentially significant environmental impact of the construction system required to realise them. As a result, shell structures typically need bespoke, disposable, and wasteful formworks. Mycelium-bound composites (MBCs) are circular, compostable, bio-based materials that, when pressed, attain an increased load-bearing capacity. They can be produced from locally sourced waste streams, which both helps to close waste loops in the region of production and to reduce the need to import materials for construction. Although their use as the main structural material for shells and spatial structures is still in the early stages of research, MBCs can be a sustainable alternative for the construction of formworks and temporary supporting structures where requirements such as fire resistance, resilience, and durability are less demanding. This paper offers an overview of the structural properties of MBCs and presents an innovative and circular use of dense MBCs to construct dry-fit waffle-like structures that can be used as falsework during the construction of shells and other geometrically driven structures. The benefits of these materials are demonstrated by performing a literature-based LCA to show the potential of dense MBCs as a valid alternative to standard materials such as oriented strand board (OSB) in construction.
  • Funicular Floor Design
    Item type: Doctoral Thesis
    Ranaudo, Francesco (2023)
    This dissertation investigates the design of funicular floors, with attention to their role in the building system, compliance with structural building codes and construction requirements. It derives its motivation from the need to develop more sustainable structural solutions to decrease the environmental impact of the construction industry, and aims to provide a valid alternative to traditional floor systems. The objectives of this research are to define methods and tools for the design of funicular floors, to scale this system to real building applications, and to explore its potential impact in the construction industry. This is achieved through the extensions of currently available form finding methods and analysis tools as well as the design and fabrication of real scale demonstrators. The first part of this dissertation introduces the funicular floor system, highlighting its benefits and limitations, and defines the open questions that prevent it from being a viable alternative to well-established slab systems. Part II systematically addresses the design of a funicular floor. It provides methods and procedures for addressing functional issues beyond the structural support of the building occupancy, such as fire, vibrations, acoustics, redundancy, ductility and diaphragm action. Finally, Part III presents several full-scale funicular floor applications and analyses how this technology could potentially impact the construction industry.
Publications 1 - 5 of 5