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Vault Structures Enabling Sustainable Products

One approach in the design of sustainable products is the transfer of evolutional principles of nature into technical applications. This was applied in the development of an innovative technology based on the principle of material structuring through self-organization. It led to a manufacturing process that requires less energy through modified forming. The process is gentle to the surface and the material itself. Flat thin materials are transformed into a third dimension. These so called “vault-structured” sheet metals open new chances for the process of designing sustainable products in the sense of fewer resources for more functionality. Improved stiffness of the sheets reduces the required sheet thickness and allows light-weight constructions. Furthermore beneficial properties of the buckled material include better stability in the case of stresses by thermal expansion, improved convective heat transfer during fluid flow over the vault-structured surface, reduced impact sound, better fluid dynamic characteristics and non-glaring light-reflection. The advantages of vault-structured sheet metals have already been exploited in various products. Examples for products using the lightweight material are automotive body parts and a thin-walled can partially made of structured material. In a drum for a washing machine the material’s high form rigidity is combined with advantageous flow behavior of the water along the vault-structured surface. At DESY, the “HERA” electron synchrotron with an extremely thin-walled detector tube, profits from the thermal expansion properties. Vault-structured sheet metals have also been applied to improve the light-reflection characteristics of a fluorescent lamp.