The material under investigation was the use of aerogel in the field of architecture as a potential structural and electrically conductive material specific to the construction industry.
Aerogel was chosen as it is currently used in the field of architecture for insulation and skylight purposes only. The vision was to use it for other purposes as well by enhancing its properties taking advantage of its open pore structure.
AEROGEL – AN OVERVIEW
The structure of aerogel enables us to add different components to it to help enhance and reduce specific properties found in the otherwise standard aerogels.
The properties of aerogel such as its light weight structure and its potential to carry loads are other features that inspired us to carry on this research.
OUR EXPERIMENTS:
As mentioned earlier due to its structure the material could be hacked at a molecular level and with the variations be used as different elements within the same structure.
Aerogel was prepared by an inhouse method in the following manner :
The aerogel properties could be changed at to stages : During the gel formation , During solvent Exchange
Both theses were tried to give the results as summarized below :
The overall results of the samples after a week were also examined :
Aerogel thus formed can be used in numerous ways in the field of architecture based on the requirement of the user.From the above we understand that although aerogel can be prepared avoiding the super-critical drying (requirement pf high pressure and temperature) the resultant aerogel is not that as desired, also due to cost effectiveness of the material and limitations in the resources available the research is currently suspended.