Toward a Digital Vernacular (2024-11)¶

Locally sourced biocomposites involve minimal transportation impacts and provide a promising avenue towards low embodied carbon material solutions for building components and furniture. The use of locally and seasonally available agricultural fibers as a basis for biocomposites, however, challenges current design paradigms due to the unique mechanical properties of each material. The paper presents a cross-scalar framework that includes the geospatial mapping of available agricultural fibers globally, which leads to five regionally specific biocomposites. Each biocomposite includes a natural fiber blended with two universally available additives - a biodegradable binder and cellulose. These 3D printable biocomposites are experimentally characterized in ways that allow strength and stiffness in bending and compression to be understood relative to the orientation of the print paths. These orthotropic properties are finally integrated in a new computational approach as the final element in the framework. The system uses topology optimization to derive the forms for components that are structurally optimized based on what fibers are available locally, and taking the specific directional mechanical properties of 3D printed morphology into account. Two design cases demonstrate that the cross-scalar mapping and computational optimization approach allow for material savings that approach 30% compared to a standard approach that would be based on the weakest blend within the fiber-based composite family.