The project

Overview

Clean energy transition imposes a drastic change of paradigm in the building construction technology. Among the several anthropogenic sources of pollution, building construction industry produces the highest environmental footprint, with massive global energy consumption and vast CO2 emission. Moreover, the enormous demand for buildings in rapidly developing countries characterised by extreme climates can cause an environmental shock, which can hardly be tolerated by our planet.

LIGHTEN project aims to foster a new generation of highly qualified scientists and engineers to become experts in advanced design methods for a sustainable built environment. Novel fully recyclable and low-carbon structural membranes offer a thinner and green alternative to glass and other transparent cladding materials when implemented in lightweight buildings, resulting in significant weight savings in the envelope and supporting structures, thus drastically reducing the environmental impact.

The remarkably incomplete scientific and technological understanding of the thermomechanical behaviour of such innovative structural membranes requires the development of engineering models capable of predicting their performances and allowing their rational use in ultralightweight buildings with enhanced energy efficiency and resilience.

Aims & Objectives

The project aims to develop a framework to assist in the characterisation, analysis, design, and implementation of innovative thin films for tensioned structures with enhanced energy-efficiency, resilience and sustainability, inspired by the circular economy concept, as summarised in the Figure below

LIGHTEN will provide a tailored and integrated doctoral program that will contribute to a resource-efficient EU, training five Early Stage Researchers to become experts in the application of advanced techniques for the design of a sustainable built environment, through the complementary expertise offered by world-leading industrial and academic partners

LIGHTEN will achieve the following research objectives:

  1. Nonlinear thermo-visco-elasto-plastic constitutive modelling of innovative structural membranes;
  2. Characterisation of failure and instabilities of structural thin films;
  3. Design and machine-learning optimisation of adaptive, lightweight and sustainable membrane structural elements, exposed to extreme conditions.

methodology & approach

LIGHTEN aims to train five ESRs in the experimental, analytical and computationally data-driven methods necessary to design and analyse the next-generation of lightweight and sustainable membrane structures.

The research and technological activities are divided into four interconnected Work Packages, which constitute the pillars of the doctoral program and guarantee multidisciplinary and intersectoral approaches:

  1. Mechanical characterisation and thermoviscoelastic modelling;
  2. Failure and instabilities of structural thin films;
  3. Data-driven design of structural membranes;
  4. Numerical implementation and design under extreme conditions.