Chapter 512: The new idea of the dome

Although Chen Xin is studying and improving emergency survival cabins, when he disassembled the used emergency survival cabins, he can see from the grid structure formed by the hardening of non-Newtonian fluid materials. It is possible to improve the design of the dome.
Although these seem to be two things and two things that are completely unrelated at first glance, they can be said to have something in common.
The grid structure used in the emergency survival cabin is a complete sphere, and the structural support of the dome is also a sphere. In principle, the two can be regarded as the same structure.
Therefore, some of the designs adopted in the emergency survival cabin can actually be applied to the dome structure.
However, there is a huge size difference between the dome structure and the emergency survival cabin. If you want to apply the technology used in the emergency survival cabin to the dome, you need to adjust the technology itself.
What Chen Xin thought of actually refers to the non-Newtonian fluid material that still has a certain degree of elasticity after being impacted and solidified and has good supporting properties. Can it imitate the characteristics of this material to support the dome? The strength is enhanced while reducing the weight of the supporting structure, making the dome lighter and larger.
From the structural point of view, both of them use a triangular grid-like support structure, but they are different.
This triangular support structure is the most stable structure, so it is not unusual to use this structure as a support, and the emergency survival cabin only uses a plane structure, while the dome support uses a more complex three-dimensional structure. structure.
Although the single-layer planar triangular network structure is equally stable, because there is only one layer and the material itself has a certain deformation, it will have a certain degree of elasticity.
If you replace it with a rigid material, eliminating the margin of deformation, it will become extremely hard.
In Chen Xin's view, this is a place that can be used.
Although the dome structure needs to be stable, in a sense it also needs a certain degree of flexibility, that is, impact resistance.
Because this is a cover covering a city, although there are few meteorites now, in the event of a meteorite impact, the dome will still bear the brunt of the impact and become the first layer of impact.
It is naturally a feasible method to strengthen the material strength of the dome as much as possible so that it can withstand the impact of meteorites.
However, this will undoubtedly have high requirements for material processing, and also high requirements for materials science itself, which requires a lot of expensive materials to achieve this.
This is not unacceptable for Chen Xinhe Guo, but it also lacks cost performance.
So if there are cost-effective materials that can be used to strengthen the dome structure, it is naturally the best thing.
In the urban design drawing of the dome that has been determined so far, the material used for the support of the dome structure is still high-performance steel, which is constructed into a triangular grid structure in the form of hollow pipes to provide sufficient support and strength.
The outer layer uses EFTE material to make independent triangular airbags, which are then spliced ​​together to form the outer layer of the dome.
The reason for this is to resist possible meteorite impacts.
If it is a large-scale meteorite impact, there is nothing to mention, unless Chen Xin builds an energy shield now, otherwise a meteorite hits the entire city and disappears, and there is no problem of resistance.
However, if it is a small meteorite, there may even be only a small amount of unburnt meteorite falling. This structure of the dome can at least serve as a buffer, so that it will not cause major damage to the city under the dome.
Moreover, even if a part of the single airbag structure is damaged, the damaged part can be replaced, so that the entire dome does not need to be replaced if one hole is damaged.
Originally, only steel was suitable for this kind of large-scale support structure, and other materials were not suitable in terms of strength or cost.
But now the emergence of this non-Newtonian liquid material has given Chen Xinxin choice and inspiration.
The strength of this material after solidification and hardening has been tested. Although it is not particularly outstanding in hardness, its toughness is very good.
Although the original development idea of ​​this material is to exist as a liquid and harden after being impacted, it is not impossible to use it as a material if it takes advantage of the characteristics of hardening.
According to Chen Xin's vision, he wanted to use this material to weave a layer of support structure on the surface of the triangular EFTE airbag to increase the strength of the dome.
When designing the dome structure, Chen Xin actually discussed this issue with relevant experts, but at that time it was proposed to use steel wire as the material, but this way the quality has greatly increased, and the steel wire itself is relatively flexible. The support strength is also insufficient.
Although everyone later proposed a series of possible materials such as engineering plastics, carbon fiber, etc., it was not a cost issue, or the material itself did not meet the requirements, and eventually had to give up this idea.
But now the emergence of this non-Newtonian liquid material has given Chen Xin a new choice.
He can use this material to fill the inner layer of the EFTE airbag with the same reinforced structure like an emergency survival cabin. When the EFTE airbag is impacted by an external force, this reinforced structure can become a support and buffer, dispersing the external force. The impact brought to strengthen the strength of the EFTE airbag.
Otherwise, the EFTE material itself is also a kind of flexible material, and it cannot maintain its shape after it is damaged, which is still a certain trouble for the dome.
For example, some small meteorites have penetrated the EFTE airbag, but actually only penetrated a small hole in the airbag. In this case, if there is no internal reinforcement, the airbag will be completely collapsed.
It is easy to find the damaged place during subsequent repairs, but it will also affect the overall performance of the dome.
However, if the airbag itself has a certain strength and can maintain its own shape even after being penetrated, the overall shape of the dome can be maintained to the maximum without affecting performance.
And even if the meteorite is relatively large and the breakdown area is relatively large, this material can be used as a reinforcing support to maintain the overall shape and structure of the EFTE airbag as much as possible, so as not to be damaged by the steel structure support of the lower layer. Caused a large area of ​​collapse.
It's just that although Chen Xin's idea is very good, it still needs to be tested whether it is practical or not.
And now Chen Xin is planning to conduct a simulation test to see if his ideas work.