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The research presented in this article aimed to investigate the differences in mechanical properties between solid structural timber and the same reinforced element in three different ways. A three-point bending test was performed on wood elements reinforced with carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP), 3D printed polycarbonate (3DPC) lamellas, and 3D printed polycarbonate with carbon fiber (3DPCCF) lamellas. In this comparison, the bending strength was large for CFRP samples, which have 8% higher performance than samples with 3DPCCF and 19% higher performance than samples with 3DPC. Conversely, when factoring in theoretical manufacturing costs, the performance of 3DPCCF is almost three times that of CFRP and 3DPC. In addition, 3D materials can be used for more complicated reinforcement shapes than those discussed in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tensile membrane structures combine a prestressed roofing envelope material and supporting elements. To design these structures, there is a set of recommendations in the European Design Guide for Tensile Surface Structures and some other national standards. However, currently, there is no official standard related to the design process of tensile structures in the European Union. The structure studied in this project is considered as permanent roofing of an external testing device in the shape of a simple hyperbolic paraboloid without enclosing walls. Snow and wind loads were analyzed as the most critical types of loading in the location. Determining the value of the snow load is relatively simple according to the European standard. However, in the case of the wind load, this shape is not considered in the European standard and needs to be solved experimentally or by numerical simulation in a wind tunnel. The present contribution focuses on numerical analysis of the wind flow in RFEM software and simulation of the wind tunnel in RWIND software. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a concept of a lunar base that would take advantage of the natural shape of an egg. Several versions of egg-shaped habitat structures characterized by different sizes are presented. Possible locations of habitats both on lunar surface and in craters were discussed. Advantages and disadvantages of particular locations were also pointed out. The proposed in the paper concept of an egg-shaped structure is characterised by a spatial character based on Voronoi diagram and would be implemented using a 3D-printed method. The presented 3D-printed structure was designed to be light and suitable to be covered by lunar soil. As a necessity in the developed concept, in situ resources utilization was addressed in order to generate products using local sources to reduce the number of materials that would be required to be transported from Earth. At the end of the paper, future areas of research and tests are highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution is focused on the design analysis of membrane structure and finding an optimal shape of such structure due to the surrounding possibilities with using numerical modeling. The membrane structure is designed for roofing of the experimental stand, which is in the campus of Faculty of Civil Engineering, VSB - Technical University of Ostrava and is currently not protected against unfavorable weather conditions. Design of membrane structures as temporary or permanent roofing has recently become very popular because of its shape variability, very low weight, and possibility of large spans. However, in addition to aesthetic requirements, structural and dispositional requirements are also necessary to consider on the same level during the design. The aim of this paper is to give an overview of the design of the temporary membrane structure starting from the architectural visualization and continuing to deal with structural and dispositional parts of the design using the RFEM software which has special add - on module for nonlinear analysis of membrane structures, RF Form - Finding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]