Krzysztof Skrzypkowski

This research explores the viability of bamboo as a green replacement for timber in building practices. Bamboo’s advantages lie in its renewability, sustainability, and resilience to disasters, despite possessing mechanical properties similar to timber. The study proposes using Finite Element Analysis (FEA) simulations, a potent instrument for designing and analyzing intricate structures under varying loads. The research explicitly employs FEA simulations to examine the application of bamboo in complex rooftop systems, using two commercial 3D CAD software—Rhino7 and Strand7. Rhino7 is responsible for 3D model creation and the member’s division into minuscule elements, whereas Strand7 is used to assign material properties, establish boundary conditions, carry out simulations, and analyze the outcomes. This research includes case studies of bamboo grid-shell structures and implements the suggested methodology. The study’s objective is to augment the scarce engineering data and to analyze bamboo as a material and the impact it can have on construction. The study’s results underscore the potential of eco-friendly, low-carbon materials, such as bamboo, in the construction industry. It also illustrates the effectiveness of FEA simulation in analyzing elaborate structures.

In underground mining, conventional loader equipment uses diesel as a power source, implying different drawbacks, such as combustion gases, low visibility, worker’s health problems, and high ventilation requirements. Thus, hybrid and electric loaders are being developed by the main industry suppliers who prefer clean technology. In this study, we analyzed the performance of an electro-mechanical powertrain through a dynamic model of underground-loader equipment using field data. This electric LHD model was compared to a diesel loader under the same operational conditions. For the case study, the results showed that the proposed electro-mechanical model, considering 14 tons of capacity, consumed 86.8 kWh, representing 60.5% less energy than the diesel loader with similar speed and torque characteristics. Thus, the proposed methodology is a valuable tool for operators, process engineers, and decision-makers, allowing an energy-efficiency evaluation for electric LHD adoption, based on the current operational data available for conventional equipment.