Thermocol Earthquake Resistant and good Conservation Practice of Natural Resources

                Earthquake seems like monster when it becomes disaster for nature and man-made things. People become homeless in seconds and the loss of loved ones is a bitter truth 
which can 
never be compensated.  

Science and Technology has always been a sign of hope for human beings and so many problems have found solution by hard work of research scholars.  

Now, we could think that if earthquake shakes even seismic zone, The home and infrastructure will not destroy, and simultaneously human lives will also be saved. 

According to Researchers at Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee (IITR) found that thermocol or Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) could resist earthquake forces on up to 
four-storey 
buildings. 

Thermocol could be the material of the future for construction of earthquake-resistant buildings even in the most seismic zone with thermal insulation and could also save 
the energy 
required to develop construction materials. 

The researchers tested a full-scale building and a number of wall elements constructed with thermocol sandwiched between two layers of concrete at the National Seismic 
Test Facility 
(NSTF) of the Department of Earthquake Engineering, IIT Roorkee. 

This was developed under the Fund for Improvement of S&T Infrastructure (FIST) programme of the Department of Science & Technology (DST), Government of India, a 
release from 
the Ministry of Science and Technology said on Monday. 

Adil Ahmad, the research scholar who conducted the tests, evaluated the behaviour of the constructions under lateral forces, as earthquake causes a force predominantly 
in lateral 
direction. 
 
The project was supplemented with detailed computer simulation of a realistic four-storey building. Supervising the research, Yogendra Singh, a professor at IITR, informed 
that the 
analysis shows that a four-storey building constructed with this technique is capable of resisting earthquake forces, even in the most seismic zone of the country, without 
any additional 
structural support. 
 
The researchers have attributed this earthquake resistance capability to the fact that the EPS layer is sandwiched between two layers of concrete, having reinforcement in 
the form of 
welded wire mesh. 

The researchers said that the force being applied on a building during an earthquake arises due to the inertia effect and hence depends on the mass of the building. 
Thermocol resists 
earthquakes by reducing the mass of the building. 
 
In this technique, the EPS core and the wire mesh reinforcement is produced in a factory. The building skeleton is first erected from the factory-made core and 
reinforcement panels, 
and then concrete is sprayed on the skeleton core. This technique does not require any shuttering and hence can be constructed very fast, the researchers said. 
 
Besides resisting earthquakes, the use of expanded polystyrene core in concrete walls of a building can result in thermal comfort. The core provides the necessary 
insulation against 
the heat transfer between building interior and exterior environment. 
 
This can help in keeping the building interiors cool in hot environments and warm during cold conditions. India suffers a large variation of temperature in different parts of 
the country 
and during different seasons of the year. Therefore, thermal comfort is a crucial consideration along with structural safety. 
 
"The technology also has the potential of saving construction material and energy, with an overall reduction in carbon footprint of buildings. It replaces a large portion of 
concrete 
volume from the walls and floor/roof. 
 
This replacement of concrete with the extremely lightweight EPS not only reduces mass, thereby decreasing the earthquake force acting on a building but also diminishes 
the burden 
on the natural resources and energy required to produce the cement concrete, the release added. 

Source: ET Realty