Tessellated I / H tiles / bricks

Hi.

I am still at the engineering design stage of a new building tile / brick invention project idea and at this point I have a technical drawing produced using my computer graphics skills to show you.

If the tiles or bricks are made of metal then either aluminium or steel are the obvious choices.

Tessellated I in Steel


View larger version of Tessellated I in Steel 1800 x 800

Representing a surface of "I"-shaped steel tiles or bricks. Produced using Paint.NET.

The "I" shape is of square proportions, the column of the I being one third of the width of the square and the top and the base one quarter of the height of the square.

The image has my own watermark added.

I am hopeful that maybe one day this kind of shaped tile or brick could prove useful in engineering where you need to build a strong, maybe temporary, wall, enclosure, barrier, box or other solid structure.

Perhaps the proving ground for my tessellated I / H tile / brick concept would could be first as a building toy?

If as with Lego, the tiles or bricks are made of plastic then maybe multicoloured bricks might be possible ...



if not then single colour bricks like Lego would be OK.

There's nothing new about tessellations in engineering of course. Somebody even used I-shaped paving stones one time.

 

I still need to work on the design a bit more because I'd want the tiles or bricks to be able to be assembled together then disassembled when necessary without having to be cemented together like a brick wall



and without having to be glued onto a mounting surface like conventional tiles



So I am looking for a design that allows assembly and disassembly such as with Lego, Meccano or other manufactured products.



So still a bit of engineering design work to do and then I'll need to start with models and prototypes first and then see if anyone else might be interested in applying my idea whether as a building toy or for a real world engineering application.

 

3-Dimensional model video









VIDEO - Tessellated I or H bricks and tiles for stronger, lighter assembled structures (YouTube)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtFN4Ir4T_s"]Tessellated I or H bricks and tiles for stronger, lighter assembled structures - YouTube

This video shows my model of the 3-dimensional shape of a simple structure composed of 6 bricks or tiles, each of which, when viewed from one-direction anyway, is a 2-dimensional "I"-shape (equally when rotated by 90 degrees "H"-shaped).

This model has been made from aluminium tubing and in order to distinguish one brick from another they have been coloured using marker pens - so there are two bricks coloured blue, two coloured green and two coloured red. This colouring was necessary for clarity because otherwise the permanent joints within bricks (which are only an artifact of the method to make a brick from square tubing) might be confused with the simple touching surface where two neighbouring bricks abut, abutting securely but without being in any way stuck by glue etc.

This 3-Dimensional model reveals a further design feature of the I or H brick and tile structures, which secures the bricks and tiles together in 2 further dimensions, some such feature being necessary because the 2-D I or H shape in of itself only secures the bricks together in 1 dimension.

This feature is revealed here to be nothing more complicated than dowels or fixing rods which run in the vertical direction of the Is (or the horizontal direction of the Hs) through shafts in the Is' bases and tops and which serve to lock the tops and bases of neighbouring Is together, preventing movement radially from the dowels.

These dowels may henceforth be referred to as "Mazurka Dowels" named after the username of a scientist in an internet science forum who first correctly anticipated this feature of my 3-D design and its function to hold the structure together in all 3-dimensions, in a reply post to my topic there describing in detail only the 2-D tessellation, suggesting somewhat vaguely that some such design element was required for a good 3-D design with a view to seeing who would suggest the solution I had thought of first.

As I explained in that topic I could hardly call those dowels the "Dow dowels" there being too many dows in that name and anyway, my name can be used to reference this particular shape of I or H tile and brick and structures composed of them, as per "Dow tile" "Dow brick" "Dow I-tile" "Dow H-brick" "Dow I-H-brick" "Dow I-H-brick structure" "Dow I-structure" etc.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRV9iuX8vSs"]HI-BRICKS & DOWELS demonstration video by Peter Dow (YouTube)

Transcript of the video



Hi everybody and welcome to my "H" / "I" Bricks or HI-BRICKS & DOWELS demonstration video.

This is Peter Dow from Aberdeen, Scotland.

There are two components to a HI-BRICKS & DOWELS construction -

• the BRICKS, which you can either describe as "H"-shaped or "I"-shaped, depending on which way you turn them around
• and the DOWELS

The shape of the "H" or "I" bricks is designed so that they fit together to form a layer or a wall of bricks and importantly, the bricks, just by their very shape, immobilise each other from moving, in one dimension only.

Let's have a look at that.

Let's consider this green brick here as the fixed point.

We can see that it immobilises its neighbouring bricks in one dimension. They can't move with respect to the green brick in this dimension. So that's locked. Even though there is no bricks here or here, the very shape stops it moving in that dimension.

Now the shape doesn't stop the bricks moving with respect to each other in that direction, or in that direction but they are fixed in that one dimension.



Now if we want to make a rigid structure of bricks in all three dimensions but without using mortar or glue so that we can assemble and disassemble the structure whenever we like, what we need next are the DOWELS.

As you can see, the "I" or "H" bricks have shafts running through the corners so that you can run a dowel through the corners - two shafts, four holes per "I" or "H" brick.

And when you assemble the bricks you can slide the dowel in ... and this forms a structure which is rigid in all three dimensions, which is what we need to form structures.

 

Interesting concept, but I think you'll find that a wall so constructed would end up lacking structural rigidity due to the hinge like quality created by the use of the dowels. Thinking along similar lines I came up with this....

 

Thank you for your reply Aemilius.

Well a locked door has structural rigidity despite the hinge-like quality of its hinges. Just because there is a theoretical point of rotation, doesn't mean the structure can rotate about that point in practice.

The bricks have square edges which resist rotation about the dowel.

It would even be possible to use a square dowel in a square hole to maximise rigidity though I don't think that would be at all necessary.

Rigidity increases using a thicker brick, decreases using a thinner brick.

How imaginative and well organised of you. Full marks for effort!

However, your dove-tailed joints mean when laying your bricks, they have to be slid in from the side and moved along into position like a toy train making for slow and awkward assembly and disassembly.

Also your design is not that all that great at resisting horizontal tensile forces along the wall. Well it may not be too bad against pure bending loads, side impacts and so on, but a sustained pulling force along the wall could pull it apart.

So I don't think your structure would be any good if you lay the bricks horizontally and tried to use them as an upper floor. You really need floors to be able to hold a sustained tension when necessary.

With the HI-bricks structure, making floors out of them is an option.

 

Hi Peter (nice to meet you)....

Right, good points all....

Peter Dow "However, your dove-tailed joints mean when laying your bricks, they have to be slid in from the side and moved along into position like a toy train making for slow and awkward assembly and disassembly."

I noticed that too.

One thing that occurred to me though looking at your design is that because of the interlocking nature of the "H" blocks, during construction, one would have to assemble or set them up and then devise some way to hold them all in place before finally inserting the long dowels that would hold them together.

It's an interesting engineering brain teaser of a project.... Emile

 

Likewise I am sure, Emile.

I had not made this clear here until now, so you were not supposed to know. I am glad you asked.

The dowels are to be in sections, each section only long enough to secure perhaps one or at most a few bricks.

The dowel sections fit into each other - one end of the dowel could be shaped like this -



And the other end with the equivalent female socket.

 

Hi Peter....

Peter Dow "How imaginative and well organised of you. Full marks for effort!"

Thanks for that.... same to you!

Peter Dow "However, your dove-tailed joints mean when laying your bricks, they have to be slid in from the side and moved along into position like a toy train making for slow and awkward assembly and disassembly."

So, I was looking at that.... if one approaches the assembly and disassembly in the conventional way, either laying or removing one course of blocks at a time horizontally, the "toy train" problem would be a big one....



....but if instead, one either lays or removes one course of blocks at a time diagonally that problem disappears, which would actually make it very quick to assemble (without any dowels)....


Peter Dow "Also your design is not that all that great at resisting horizontal tensile forces along the wall. Well it may not be too bad against pure bending loads, side impacts and so on, but a sustained pulling force along the wall could pull it apart."

That's easy to remedy by just inserting one dowel at each end of the wall. That way you don't need a whole truck load of dowels to hold together all the individual elements of the wall. If it turned out there was some extraordinary need for greater horizontal tensile strength along the length of the wall additional dowels could be added at regular intervals according to need....




Peter Dow "So I don't think your structure would be any good if you lay the bricks horizontally and tried to use them as an upper floor. You really need floors to be able to hold a sustained tension when necessary."

I hadn't considered the floor/foundation or the roof/upper floor yet.... I thought we were just talking about walls so far. I'll have to think about that.

Peter Dow "With the HI-bricks structure, making floors out of them is an option."

I'm having trouble picturing exactly how that would work.... could you throw in a schematic for me?

Great topic.... Emile

 

Animated gif files. This gets better. :2thumbsup:

Unfortunately, for high walls, the brick layer, if working alone, has to climb up and down stairs of the scaffold for every diagonal of bricks to be laid. So to save on climbing you need one brick layer on every level of the scaffold, laying concurrently, with the faster brick layer on the lower layers so as not to hold up his colleagues above. Well I won't try to work out all the issues with construction but yes it could be done.

Your dowels in this diagram only secure the 3 bricks at either end to the dowel which runs through them. The 4 bricks in between are not stuck, except by any mortar, to either dowel. If the dowels are pulled apart and the mortar if any breaks, then the 4 middle bricks pick a side and the wall comes apart.

The "regular intervals" you'd need dowels to resist horizontal tensile forces pulling from either end of the wall would be every half brick!

Not now no. I don't see your problem. The model I made had the bricks in the floor configuration.

Thanks!

 

Peter Dow "The model I made had the bricks in the floor configuration."

Ahhh.... I see that now. Right, works well as flooring.

What does it mean to be a Scottish National Standard Bearer?

 

Peter Dow "Unfortunately, for high walls, the brick layer, if working alone, has to climb up and down stairs of the scaffold for every diagonal of bricks to be laid. So to save on climbing you need one brick layer on every level of the scaffold, laying concurrently, with the faster brick layer on the lower layers so as not to hold up his colleagues above. Well I won't try to work out all the issues with construction but yes it could be done."

You're right, I can see all that and it makes perfect sense.... no need to explain further.

Peter Dow "Your dowels in this diagram only secure the 3 bricks at either end to the dowel which runs through them. The 4 bricks in between are not stuck, except by any mortar, to either dowel. If the dowels are pulled apart and the mortar if any breaks, then the 4 middle bricks pick a side and the wall comes apart.

The "regular intervals" you'd need dowels to resist horizontal tensile forces pulling from either end of the wall would be every half brick!"

You're right again.... clearly you've spent a lot more time thinking about this sort of thing than just the few hours I have!

Looking at it again now in view of all that, let me try and kill two birds with one stone. Here's a construction method using the same idea that allows for the horizontal laying or removal of one course of blocks at a time and also corrects the lack of horizontal tensile strength along the wall as well (without any dowels)....



If construction time is a consideration, and it usually is, I'd wager everything that to build either a temporary or permanent structure using the same number of blocks of comparable size, a simple dovetail configuration (or something similar, Lego's, etc.) would be more efficient overall and that the structure would go up much, much faster than if one has to keep stopping to tap in more dowels as one goes along.... and disassembling it would be an even more tedious process in reverse.

 

You have rotated the weak-link direction to the vertical where tensile forces are rarer. OK, that may be satisfactory for most stationary structures, buildings and so on, but there are still earthquakes and tornadoes in some parts of the world which could pull your wall up and apart.

Also if the building materials need to be very-lightweight, say to be air dropped into a disaster zone, then you may find even gale or storm force winds cause enough upward force on lightweight bricks to pull them apart.

It's also not that good if the structure is say one which needs to be lifted by a crane or dangle on a rope.

My proposal is not simply "a way to build buildings for an application where a fired-clay-brick-and-mortar building already does the job well" but for very demanding applications.

So your structure still needs some way of resisting tensile forces in the vertical direction in order to be competitive for those tough jobs - horizontal dowels perhaps?

Well the point is the dowels offer a 3D strength that for some applications makes it worth it to take the time to insert them - and simply slotting dowels in should prove to be quicker than alternatives such as nuts and bolts which take a longer time and more skill to fit.

 

Right, well it's been fun.... Good luck!