hydropanel is a project developed in Digital Matter : Intelligent Construction Studio

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The project was to define the material behaviors and utilize them in a way that

a new material system can be introduced and applied onto architectural appliances.

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hydropanel is benefited from the evaporative behavior of the hydrogels

which result in lowering the temperature of the surroundings.

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After several tests and prototypes, we came to a conclusion that the movement

we were trying to achieve was against the nature of material behavior.

The absorbing process works moderately but the drying process

needed to be accelerate which will result in more external energy requirement.

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Shifting Direction

We then started to look at another property of hydrogel : cooling property.

By observing the typical Evaporative Cooling System,

we applied our material into the system since the hydrogels are 98 percent composed of water.

The evaporation from hydrogels was likely to result in similar or better effect as Typical Evaporative Cooling System.

From this evaporation diagram, We can see that the heat of vaporization of water is about 0.6 kilocalories per gram, that is how the a cooling effect occurs. Taking this phenomenon as a hypothesis, we set up a test to observe the cooling performance of this smart material in composition with other selected materials i.e. Plastic, Aluminum, Clay in order to find the most suitable supportive material.

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 Test Set-up

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The test results point out that clay is the best material for transferring the heat. Perforation on all panel leads to over-humid condition.  We then used the psychrometric chart to acquire the value of human comfort zone in different extreme weather condition.

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Click here for Growth Documentation Video

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Click here for Fabrication Process Video

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