Tag / engineering

by Ar. Gopika C B

The ‘Concrete’ Decision of Tech Fasting.

Tech fasting is a total disconnect from the technology, embracing the nature by just being yourself by relieving all strings attached.

‘Gonna be in my regular weekend tech fasting. Will not be available, call you monday morning, tc dumbo‘ – Vishanth texted me couple of days back. He spends most such weekends in his hill station resort.

Vishanth is a Construction Management professional for whom his job demands his online availability 24×7. Diligent since early stage of career, his long standing efforts got paid off soon. Now the Principal Project Manager in US, tailor made his schedule so that it perfectly aligns with his personal and professional life.

Woke up to his call, in high spirits he asked “Feel like appreciating my concrete decision of tech fasting for self healing from stress?”

“Yes, yes, in fact lot common for you and concrete” I replied playfully.

“Loosu, started in the morning itself“, he sensed something coming.

“No.. I am serious. Both make good bonds, are strong, cannot take tension, will perform good upon reinforcement, takes time to settle in one place and are self healing from stress” I chuckled at his astonishment.

It was until early 2030’s the task of sealing cracks in concrete using sand, aggregates etc pertained. Formation of cracks in concrete were common untill self healing concrete was developed. Reasearches happened on various ways to achieve self healing property of concrete. One of them was to add Super Absorbent Polymer (SAP) to the concrete. This on formation of cracks get exposed to humidity and swells, thereby seals the crack. Another research was on adding Calcium Carbonate precipitating microorganisms which seal the crack with layers of Calcium Carbonate.

“Thank god, you didn’t point out transparent concrete or bio luminescent concrete!”, he scored.

Reference: https://www.ugent.be/ea/structural-engineering/en/research/magnel/research/research3/selfhealing

Image courtesy: https://pixabay.com/images

by Ar. Gopika C B

An apartment hanging from an asteroid!

“My apartment’s foundation is on an asteroid“, if Jerry would have told me this back in 2020, I would have tagged him crazy. Little did I know that years ahead, one of our meetings would be in his apartment in architectural marvell ‘Analemma Tower’.

Bestie of mine, an MBA graduate found his results for hard work in Canada and now is the CEO of a well established prefabrication and innovation company. Guess that’s what made him excited about owning an apartment in Analemma.

Analemma is placed in an eccentric geosynchronous orbit. Essentially, gypsy minded Jerry now travels thousands of miles between northern and southern hemispheres on a daily basis. I was dropped to the building by a passenger drone from New York city since the orbit was caliberated such as the slowest part of towers trajectory is occurring there. I was made to wear a protective suit as the temperature may range around -40°C at an elevation 32,000 meters. Literally, that is called a real ‘sky scraper’ from where the residents could use passenger drone system or directly parachute down to earth.

Jerry’s wife and me were chit chatting as she was cooking rajma in the electric stove powered from the most efficient space-based solar panels. The windows had different shapes over each floors specifically designed for variations in atmospheric conditions throughout the altitude and they never opens to the same view. The 45 minutes additional availability of daylight due to the higher elevation is an added advantage for this gadget maniac.

He started to throw light on Universal Orbital Support System (UOSS) as he was making my bed in the guest room. UOSS is the concept of suspending a body from an orbiting body in space. Hence both the masses are coupled that the orbiting body remains in higher altitude than that of the suspended body. Asteroid from which Analemma tower is to be suspended was captured and relocated to the orbit through an asteroid retreval mission in 2021. Further to this the building constructed in Dubai was brought and suspended using high strength cable.

Jerry’s wrist chip received an AR call from Tirou and projected Tirou’s face to our eye level.
“What’s up, bhai?”, Tirou asked.
“We are mixing the purest of water directly captured from cloud to a glass of whiskey, da” Jerry replied as the window behind us slowly opened to the sky view of Dubai city.

Image courtesy & reference: https://cloudsao.com/ANALEMMA-TOWERhttps://cloudsao.com/ANALEMMA-TOWER