21 ms·
Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020)
- anArbitraryOne 3y agoWould it be stronger for the same amount of bricks if it didn't have the inflection point where there is no curvature, and instead had intersecting arcs like: ︾︾︾︾ ?
- badcppdev 3y agoI think you're asking if a series of arcs is stronger than a wavy line. It's a great question and I think the answer to that would require a full model of the two walls to calculate all the stresses, etc. But I think it would also depend on the question of "stronger against what?" A pushing force but at what point and at what angle. Even height might make a difference. My gut instinct is that the point where a wavy wall changes from curving one way to another is a slight weak point and perhaps an angle there would actually be stronger. Might be totally wrong.
- Prcmaker 3y agoI think it would be less strong than a wavy wall of similar brick count, but still more efficient than an equivalent strength wall built in a straight line. My mental reasoning for this is that a (pseudo) sinusoid spends a lot more of its path further away from the centre. Thinking of it as a point moving along the path through time, it will dwell and the peaks, and cruise through he centre. The contribution of each brick to wall stiffness will be related to the cube of the distance from the centre line (neutral axis), so more 'time' spent at the peaks is best. This holds true on the macro scale, but could vary on the scale of a half 'wavelength' as the lack of inversion of curvature could be beneficial there. Everything moderately reasonable seems to be better than a straight line in this instance. In the limit, two much thinner walls, far apart, is the optimal solution, but that becomes unreasonable as those walls must be coupled together to provide strength.
- carabiner 3y agoIf you made the arcs deeper than the curves of the wave I think yes. If you just sliced and flipped the arcs from the original wave, no. It'd be a straightforward calculation for the moment of inertia but I'm too lazy to do it. It's all about placing the most mass farthest from the centroid line.
- HideousKojima 3y agoIf you follow the link in the post explaining the math behind everything, it says: "They use more bricks than a straight wall of the same thickness but they don’t have to be as thick."
- adamc 3y agoCame here to mention just that.
- judge2020 3y agoThe post also says this in the first paragraph: > Popularized in England, these wavy walls actually use less bricks than a straight wall because they can be made just one brick thin, while a straight wall—without buttresses—would easily topple over.
- gymbeaux 3y agoSo wavy walls use more bricks than straight walls
- adamc 3y agoNo, because they are stronger and can therefore be thinner. But the why is important.
- gymbeaux 3y agoWavy walls use more individual bricks, but less “brick”
- BowBun 3y agoWell, no. By length it's the same # of bricks if the wall is the same thickness. It requires less bricks to wall off an area using a single-layer wavy wall than it does with a double-layer straight wall
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
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- fnord77 3y agolooks infuriating to mow around
- jamesmurdza 3y agoThis looks similar to the way corrugated steel is harder to bend due to a higher "area moment of inertia".
- javier123454321 3y agoYeah but more space, and are therefore the wrong choice a lot of the time.
- csours 3y agoOr it's a way to brag about how much space you have.
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoYeah. Like how Lawns were a way to brag about how much land you have. "Look, I have so much land I can just grow grass instead of crops, you plebs".
- Sharlin 3y agoAnd the lawns of today’s middle class are of course still about signaling, it being very humsn for people to try to raise themselves up by adopting and imitating the lifestyle and customs of the class above them. "Look, I have enough leisure time to spend on an entirely superfluous activity!" or "Look, I’m wealthy enough to pay somebody to engage in an entirely superfluous activity!" Particularly in arid climates it’s also "look how much I can afford to waste perfectly good drinking water!"
- ehnto 3y agoSomething that gave me a chuckle growing up where I did in Australia: everyone's lawn died in the summer. You're weren't allowed to water it enough due to drought measures, and the summers are so hot they die off on the first heat of the season. I notice a lot more people ditch the lawn for native plants now. Sure does look a lot less futile than spending a third of your lot on dead grass. Many memories playing cricket on dry, prickly, dead grass as a kid.
- episiarch 3y agoLawns don't usually die in the summer, they go dormant. You can usually distinguish between dead grass and dormant grass by observing the color: dormant grass is yellow, while dead grass is grayish. Texas lawns commonly use some form of bermuda grass, which goes dormant during the hot season (typically late July to late September). Some lawns will mix in a rye grass which shows bright green color during this same season to preserve the look, but obviously this compromises the growth of both types of grass.
- throwaway894345 3y agoI’ll save folks some reading: they’re comparing a very thick straight wall with a much thinner wavy wall.
- deaddodo 3y agoThe primary point is that you can't make an equivalently thin straight wall due to natural (wind and gravity, primarily) forces. Kinda weird to summarize it without the crux of why.
- throwaway894345 3y ago> Kinda weird to summarize it without the crux of why. I agree, the headline did a very poor job of summarizing.
- deaddodo 3y agoYet, you did an even worse job expounding.
- throwaway894345 3y agoNope. "Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall" is so misleading it may as well be a lie. Enjoy your day.
- deaddodo 3y agoYeah yeah, we got it. You're ignorant and stubborn.
- throwaway894345 3y agoHah, what a strange thing to attack someone over. I’m not sure who “we” is, but I hope you can all move on from this.
- nfriedly 3y agoI believe I've read that some plants do better when planted in the concave portion of a wavy wall, because the bricks absorb warmth during the day and release it at night.
- tokai 3y agoFruit Walls https://99percentinvisible.org/article/fruit-walls-before-greenhouses-walled-gardens-created-urban-micro-climates/ https://99percentinvisible.org/article/fruit-walls-before-gr...
- qwertox 3y agoDid my adblocker accidentally filter out the explanation? Following the link which is supposed to explain another thing, why it is more resistant to lateral forces, it contains an explanation: > The parameter a is the amplitude of the sine wave. If a = 0, we have a flat wave, i.e. a straight wall, as so the length of this segment is 2π = 6.2832. If a = 1, the integral is 7.6404. So a section of wall is 22% longer, but uses 50% less material per unit length as a wall two bricks thick. "as a wall two bricks thick". Hmmm. Even bigger savings as a wall three bricks thick.
- secondcoming 3y agoYou need to use two brick width for stability.
- qwertox 3y agoIs that what we're doing? If I remember correctly, the walls around the houses in my childhood neighborhood were only one brick in width. Also walls around cemeteries and such, I could swear they are not double-width walls.
- aeyes 3y agoOne brick wide walls often have a thicker pillar for stability every couple of meters.
- londons_explore 3y agoAnd two brick thick walls often have pillars... So pillars aren't a good indicator.
- Rumudiez 3y agoThose are just veneers. My grandfather was a professional brick and stone mason. You can tell if a brick wall is load bearing if it has alternating directions: every so many bricks you’ll see one or more that’s been rotated 90° to connect the layers together Veneer, all the bricks are in the same orientation: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1b/65/ec/1b65ec6fdb488d3dab2863bc6fc6c1fb.jpg https://i.pinimg.com/originals/1b/65/ec/1b65ec6fdb488d3dab28... Supporting wall, notice the alternating pattern: https://www.backwoodshome.com/bhm/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/blocks-bricks-brickwall-761142.jpg https://www.backwoodshome.com/bhm/wp-content/uploads/2015/12...
- throw9away6 3y agoI’ve seen this design when making ultra light weight structures. It does work but can be difficult to manufacture
- DriverDaily 3y agoAlso, looks harder to mow the lawn.
- CrzyLngPwd 3y agoBut surely more fun :-)
- throw9away6 3y agoNo lawns in metallic structures
- geeky4qwerty 3y agoThis feels a bit like diet clickbait... "use fewer bricks than a straight wall"* *A straight wall of the approximal strength and length of a wavy wall, not just length. My counter would be that from a practical perspective the amount of space wasted by the wavy design seems to negate the usefulness of the design. Probably makes the lawn crew dizzy when mowing it too!
- turnsout 3y agoIf you have plenty of space but you're tight on money, it's an ingenious solution.
- geeky4qwerty 3y agoGood point. I'd say if you're tight on money I'm not sure a wall should be at the top of your to-buy list.
- turnsout 3y agoIt is if you're selling sheep milk and you don't want to lose your flock.
- bee_rider 3y agoI think that’s typically a job for fences, right? This sort of wall is, I think, just an aesthetic way of marking a property line/get some privacy.
- devilbunny 3y agoDrive through rural northern England and you will see vast numbers of sheep moving through pastures that are bordered by old dry-stone walls. The roads will even have equestrian gates alongside them when they have stock grids to prevent the sheep from using the road. It's all about adapting to local materials. The same technique was used by early settlers in New England (think about the ending of The Shawshank Redemption) because they had to get the stones out of the ground in order to plow and harvest - rather than just make a pile, they used the stones to build walls separating fields.
- fredley 3y agoIn the UK these ate known by the wonderful term "Crinkle crankle wall"
- Underphil 3y agoThat is written in the best first paragraph of the article.
- CodeSgt 3y agoI feel like everyone this far is missing something, or perhaps just I am. I understand that a wavy wall will be stronger than a straight wall of the same thickness, therefore if you need that additional strength it technically uses fewer bricks to reach it. That said, if the alternative is a 2 layer straight wall, is the wavy wall equally as strong? Or is it just stronger than the single layer wall? Without knowing anything about the subject matter, I’d assume that the strength goes in order of single-layer straight, wavy, double-layer straight. No? Seems like needing just the amount of strength the wavy wall provides, and no more, would be a fairly rare use case. Leading to double-layer straights most of the time anyway.
- gswdh 3y ago[dead]
- HWR_14 3y ago"Strength" is used to refer to things like wind hitting the wall, not a car. That is, the wall toppling, not breaking. So the wavy wall with its wide base is quite strong.
- chaostheory 3y agoWell, tbf the article doesn’t even try to explain how wavy walls are stronger than straight ones, or how fewer bricks are needed.
- amelius 3y agoIt doesn't need to, a child understands this. The only thing the article needed to explain was how the title should be interpreted, and it did fine in this respect.
- chaostheory 3y agoIf any child supposedly understands this, why does HN consider this novel? The questions in this post also don’t support your comment. There’s also no need to be impolite. If it’s such an easy concept that you actually already understand, maybe explain it in layman terms instead?
- hammock 3y agoCorrugated cardboard just is a wavy wall, sandwiched in between two straight walls. You can also observe corrugated steel and its use in construction, shipping containers, etc. Because these are steel and stronger than paper, the sandwich layers are not needed
- oniony 3y agoYou can also peel the label of a tin (can) of baked beans in your cupboard to see the the ripples added for rigidity.
- finnh 3y agoas a bonus, they make canned cranberry sauce visually appealing on the Thanksgiving platter :)
- singleshot_ 3y agoEver notice there’s a subtle fold in the shape of an “x” in the middle of the sheet metal panels that make up ductwork? Undulations for rigidity are everywhere!
- quickthrower2 3y agoIf it wasn’t for fashion it would probably be the most popular building material for roofs. Make your roof out of that and at an angle and you probably never worry about leaks for decades.
- AlotOfReading 3y agoIt's all over the place in impoverished areas, often with a bunch of rocks or tires on top to weight it down. If you actually stay in such a structure though, it quickly becomes apparent how little it offers in the way of thermal or acoustic insulation. The sound in a heavy rainstorm can be deafening. You can mitigate the issues with proper design, but at that point may as well use a real metal roof or a prebuilt.
- Maken 3y ago
- trhr 3y agoGiven how much OCD I have about naming variables and writing unit tests, I think if this was in front of my house, I'd take a sledgehammer to it. Fences shall be straight, damnit.
- alecst 3y ago> As for the mathematics behind these serpentine walls and why the waves make them more resistant to horizontal forces like wind vs straight walls, check out this post by John D. Cook. The linked post does not explain why the walls are more resistant to forces. It just calculates the difference in length.
- NeoTar 3y ago"Popularized in England" - maybe popularized, but such walls are by no means popular or common. "The county of Suffolk seems to be home to countless examples of these crinkle crankle walls. On freston.net you can find 100 wavy walls that have been documented and photographed." Although it's not explicitly said, let's suppose that every one of those wavy walls is in Suffolk. The population of the county is 761 350 - let's assume there are 100 000 homes (although there is the city of Ipswitch, it's otherwise largely a rural county where single-family homes will be common). So only roughly one-in-one-thousand homes in Suffolk has such a 'wavy wall'. Elsewhere in the country probably even less - e.g. I've never seem one. Any for everyone complaining about mowing - do you actually have grass all the way up to your boundary wall? In my experience it's pretty common to have a flower bed running all the length of the boundary, so mowing would not be a problem.
- em-bee 3y agoSo only roughly one-in-one-thousand homes in Suffolk has such a 'wavy wall' yes, but you also need to take into account how many homes have any brick wall at all.
- jon_adler 3y agoAnecdotally, I would say that flint stone walls are more common than wavy walls. I’ve see plenty of the former and none of the latter wham driving through the county.
- em-bee 3y agothat's not surprising. even without ever having been there i am aware of some areas of the british isles having a reputation for stone walls. but not for brick walls. which makes the question of the popularity of wavy brick walls even more interesting. how many non-wavy brick walls are there?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nonethewiser 3y agoI see this a lot in the rural US with wooden fences but had no idea why it was done, but I guess its for the same reason (stability). Apparently they've done it since the 1600s. https://www.louispage.com/blog/bid/11160/worm-fence-what-is-it https://www.louispage.com/blog/bid/11160/worm-fence-what-is-... Still, this seemed totally unecessary until I realized this mean they dont have to put any posts into the ground. No digging holes, which would be really nice when you're trying to fence up very large acreage.
- Cerium 3y agoThose fences are also popular in places where it is cold in the winter. No posts in the ground means no frost heave. A fence like that can sit unmaintained for decades before it starts to fall apart.
- bin_bash 3y agoit's not for stability, it's because it doesn't require posts so it's cheap and quick
- gowld 3y agoLots of things "don't require posts so it's cheap and quick", but this version makes a stable wall.
- drtz 3y agoBut it is for stability. Try making a straight fence with no posts and see how stable it is.
- nonethewiser 3y ago> it's not for stability, it's because it doesn't require posts That’s stability
- tssva 3y agoThe park service uses this type of fencing a lot.
- autoexec 3y ago
- kulor 3y agoTangentially related; as covered in The Blue Factory documentary[1], one of the challenges with the EB110's design was its flat sides. Curved body panels provide greater strength and importantly, reduces vibrations. FWIW The Blue Factory had the same kind of charm as the General Magic documentary 1. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6301490/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6301490/
- pfdietz 3y agoThe labor to build such a wall may dominate the savings in brick. But if you're building a brick wall, maybe you don't care much about either. I wonder if this sort of structure could be built by 3D printing, say with concrete or even soil.
- etskinner 3y agoThere's actually a similar concept in 3D printing called gyroid infill, it's essentially a 3D version of the wavy wall: https://www.wevolver.com/article/understanding-the-gyroid-infill-in-3d-printing https://www.wevolver.com/article/understanding-the-gyroid-in...
- devilbunny 3y agoLabor is pretty much directly proportional to number of bricks placed. If you save on bricks, you save on labor. If that was your point, sorry for misreading you. In the era in which these were commonly used, bricks were largely made on-site or very nearby. So you saved on labor twice - once to make the bricks, and again to place them.
- pfdietz 3y agoI was thinking of a comment in the John Cook link, where someone was saying these are fiddly to build compared to a conventional brick wall.
- devilbunny 3y agoThey're certainly fiddly to plan out compared to a straight wall (where all you need is a long piece of twine anchored at each end), but I assume that those building them use some kind of forms to help keep the angles correct.
- toss1 3y agoVery cool. So what is the optimal solution? To maximize the strength and minimize the bricks used, is a sine the best shape, or is there a better curve, and what is the best period and amplitude of the waveform? Does this solution change with the height of the wall?
- asimpletune 3y agoMost likely you want the smallest curve that’s achieves an acceptable amount of stability. Since the wave exists to prevent the wall from toppling, a pure sine is probably overkill. So I guess a factor then will be how tall your wall is. A very tall wall will need a deep wave, just like a wall one brick high would need no wave at all.
- vharuck 3y agoSoda cans also have a counterintuitive efficiency feature: concave bottoms. If a can with a flat bottom held the same amount of soda, it would be shorter and have less surface area, but its metal body would need to be thicker to withstand the same pressure. In the end, it'd require more aluminum. https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/Science-Notebook/2015/0414/The-surprising-science-behind-the-aluminum-soda-can https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/Science-Notebook/2015/0414... ^Probably not the best article for this, but it was easy to find and has a link to a chemical engineer's video.
- codyb 3y agoI think that's also why a pretty small kink in the can will make it tremendously easier to crush against your forehead as a party trick :-) Or, more likely, it's a similar principle also at place in the design.
- anamexis 3y agoEngineer Guy (Bill Hammack) has a great video about this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUhisi2FBuw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUhisi2FBuw Edit: Just realized this is the same video you referenced. All of his work is fantastic.
- hinkley 3y agoI really liked this video when I watched it. I may have watched it twice.
- mcpackieh 3y agoI've encountered a few of his videos on wikipedia (creative commons license.) Pretty neat. His 'drinking bird' video is used on the wikipedia page for the same: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_bird#Physical_and_chemical_principles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_bird#Physical_and_che...
- xp84 3y ago> All of his work is fantastic. Even that is an understatement, I love those videos
- tonmoy 3y agoNot sure about the actual function that defines the wave, but let’s assume they are convex and concave semi circles. Then to make a wall of length L with bricks of l length, we need piL/l number of bricks. The linked Reddit post says a straight wall needs to be 2 bricks wide to have the same length, which needs 2L/l number of bricks which is fewer than the wavy walls
- contravariant 3y agoSemicircles seem excessive. At no point does the wall have an angle over 45 degrees, so a semi-circle which would be at a 90 degree angle for every inflection point seems way too wavy. A sine wave is probably closer, which would give an arc length of sqrt(1+cos(2pix/L)^2). This has no reasonable closed form I can find but it seems like it would be about 21% longer than a straight line. Edit: Also a semicircle is pi/2 times as long as its diameter, not pi times.
- hinkley 3y agoSines are about 1/.7 (40%) longer aren’t they?
- contravariant 3y agoWhat would be about what you'd get if you made a sawtooth out of straight sections, pretty sure that's quite a bit longer than a sine wave would be.
- hinkley 3y agoYeah I'm thinking of electricity. A right isosceles triangle has a hypotenuse that's √2 (1.41) and 1/√2 = 0.71. Stack Overflow seems to think it's around 2.4x, but I am not sure I could ever follow the math and I certainly can't now. I think the amplitude makes the difference here and SO is answering a different question, otherwise this article would be wrong and that wasn't my impression the first time I encountered this topic. second edit: The article linked from this article says: So a crinkle wall with amplitude 1.4422 uses about as many bricks as a straight wall twice as thick.
- jolt42 3y agoHas someone figured out the ideal frequency / amplitude of the wave? Maybe the frequency that matches the strength of a one-brick straight wall? The pictures strike me as possibly wavier than needed.
- adamrezich 3y agowouldn't that depend on how tall the wall is?
- ilyt 3y agoIt would be strength/brick use tradeoff. I want to know how that compares to just adding some rebar along the way
- jansan 3y agoOf course title is a bit of a clickbait, because they are comparing walls of same strength, not single row straight walls with curved walls. But how does this compare with a straight wall with brick columns every two meters or so? My guess this is the best compromise, and maybe that is the best compromise, as it uses about the same number of bricks as a curves wall, but the area wasted is much smaller.
- gowld 3y agoThe important part is https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2019/11/19/crinkle-crankle-calculus/ https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2019/11/19/crinkle-crankle-ca...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- badcppdev 3y agoI actually find that web page quite disappointing because there is no comparison of the relative strengths of the different wall shapes.
- MR4D 3y agoTLDR: they don't need buttresses, hence the savings.
- BobMackay 3y agoI think one should also consider the failure modes when, for example, a tree falls into the wall. For a straight wall, it is possible that a falling section will propagate the failure along the entire length of the wall. For a wavy wall, it is likely to fail in shear, limiting the damage to one section.
- Terr_ 3y agoAnother reason for some a wavy walls involves capturing more heat from sunlight over the course of a day, in this example for nearby plants: > The Dutch, meanwhile, began to develop curved varieties that could capture more heat, increasing thermal gain (particularly useful for a cooler and more northern region). The curves also helped with structural integrity, requiring less thickness for support. [0] https://99percentinvisible.org/article/fruit-walls-before-greenhouses-walled-gardens-created-urban-micro-climates/ https://99percentinvisible.org/article/fruit-walls-before-gr...
- dontrustme 3y agoif you think of it from the context that the diagonal length of a brick is it's longest dimension, you can start to intuitively imagine how this efficiency in layout pattern is achieved.
- dontrustme 3y ago-signed, an architect
- LegitShady 3y ago“Hackernews discovers first year university engineering statics/analysis from articles that are really just reposts of 3 year old reddit content”
- pests 3y agoSorry, didn't realize you knew everything in the world already.
- LegitShady 3y agoI avoid getting my knowledge of the world from reddit reposts, and yes, I did take first year statics, as well as structural analysis 1 and 2, wood design, concrete design, steel design, and masonry design.
- pests 3y agoCongratulations.
- dang 3y agoRelated: Crinkle Crankle Wall - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33155781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33155781 - Oct 2022 (1 comment) Wavy walls use fewer bricks than a straight wall (2020) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25359550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25359550 - Dec 2020 (1 comment) Crinkle Crankle Wall - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21554986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21554986 - Nov 2019 (56 comments)
- omoikane 3y agoI first learned about serpentine walls via splint, which is a linter for C. The serpentine walls were visible on the front page until 2020: https://web.archive.org/web/20200521064022/http://splint.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20200521064022/http://splint.org... The FAQ explains why they chose this logo: The walls are one brick thick, but because of their design are both strong and aesthetic. Like a secure program, secure walls depend on sturdy bricks, solid construction, and elegant and principled design. https://splint.org/faq.html#quest2 https://splint.org/faq.html#quest2
- silisili 3y agoNot a physics person...but is this similar to the effect of 'rolling' thin pizza so it won't droop? Or is it strictly about being better at wind resistance?
- cantSpellSober 3y agoIf you're eating pizza somewhere windy
- cantSpellSober 3y agoNo they don't > [Wavy walls] use more bricks than a straight wall of the same thickness However they "resist horizontal forces, like wind, more than straight wall would." > So if the alternative to a crinkle crankle wall one-brick thick is a straight wall two or more bricks thick, the former saves material https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2019/11/19/crinkle-crankle-calculus/ https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2019/11/19/crinkle-crankle-ca...
- surfpel 3y agoIf a one brick thick straight wall can't stand, then you don't have a wall you have a pile of bricks. It's pointless to consider the impractical case.
- cantSpellSober 3y agoMost will stand unless they need high wind resistance (or are buttressed). There are many practical cases for a straight wall of bricks, it's not an "impractical case."
- surfpel 3y ago> > If a one brick thick straight wall can't stand Caveat there is quite significant. > There are many practical cases for a straight wall of bricks Indeed the vast majority of cases yes.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cantSpellSober 3y ago> Caveat there is quite significant and missing from the title
- spread_love 3y agoAnother "article" summarizing a reddit post. They even took the top comment and put it at the end > wavy walls that lawnmowers surely detest!
- incompatible 3y agoLawn edges that can't be mowed, because of a house wall or something, are an issue at my place. If just leave the grass at the edge, it grows long, then grows to seed, and the long grass seems to expand in width inexorably over time. I don't want to use a plastic-shedding line trimmer or herbicides. I end up pulling out the grass near the edge, leaving a bare strip that takes a while to grow back, but it's a bit labour-intensive.
- carapace 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_curvature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_curvature
- andy800 3y agoThe University of Virginia, designed by Thomas Jefferson, features numerous brick serpentine walls. https://www.google.com/search?q=uva+serpentine+walls&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=uva+serpentine+walls&tbm=isc...
- Jemm 3y agofewer bricks than a straight wall with supports.
- esafak 3y agoSo, when it comes to pressure, the straight wall isn't "gonna take it"? (twisted sifter) I'll show myself out.
- rkagerer 3y agoTLDR: Because they can be one brick thin. The waviness works just like corrugated cardboard.
- dtgriscom 3y agoThere's been a one-brick-thick wavy wall off a busy road in Cambridge for at least fifty years: https://goo.gl/maps/sxTsPW71F317gwK88 https://goo.gl/maps/sxTsPW71F317gwK88 It kept getting hit by cars until they finally installed a guard rail.
- xxpor 3y agoIt took me way too long to see that the cars are driving on the right, so this is Cambridge MA, not Cambridge UK.
- dtgriscom 3y ago... wait... there's another Cambridge?
- gottorf 3y agoDriving in the Boston area is hard enough already, we don't need to add wavy walls into the mix ;-)
- andai 3y agoDoes something about this design make it more likely to get hit by cars? I guess the force of impact would be greater relative to scraping a straight wall.
- dtgriscom 3y agoIt's at an intersection of a curvy four-lane road which is very busy at rush hour.
- hyperhopper 3y agoThis headline is awful and sounds sensational. Better headline would be "wavy walls use fewert bricks than thicker straight walls"
- ilyt 3y agoand like 5x the space
- ilyt 3y agoAt cost of like 5x the space ? I guess if you have cheap land but bricks are at premium it makes sense
- Lio 3y agoI saw the title and instantly thought, of Suffolk, England. Quite pleasing to see it referenced in the article too. Proper Suffolk that, like little pink cottages and good quawlity tea towels[1]. :D 1. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6-7hcPXwpBQ https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6-7hcPXwpBQ
- serial_dev 3y ago> these wavy walls actually use less bricks than a straight wall because they can be made just one brick thin, while a straight wall—without buttresses—would easily topple over. And what about a straight wall with buttresses? Can we make them just as sturdy with fewer bricks?
- kristjansson 3y agoNo, that’s sort of the point? There are fewer extra bricks used to make the curve than would be required to buttress / reinforce a straight wall.
- cantSpellSober 3y ago> There are fewer extra bricks used to make the curve than would be required to buttress Where does it say that?
- Prcmaker 3y agoThe same reason is why my roof has corrugated metal sheeting, rather than plate. This was a question I had students prove out. With the bending moment of inertia being related to the cube of the thickness for a flat plate, the maths trickles out very quickly.
- kazinator 3y agoCorrugated cardboard uses less paper than what it would take with flat paper, and the box weighs less. A wavy fiberglass roof uses less cloth and resin, and less reinforcement, than flat composite sheets would require. A wavy roadside guard rail made of sheet metal uses less metal than a flat guardrail. A snowshovel stamped/moulded with kinks in it can be thinner than a solid one. ...