Design Considerations for Hexagonal Refugee Shelters
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- There are currently 25 million refugees—people forced to move due to war, violence, or persecution—and this problem is growing exponentially. Refugees spend an average of 17 years in refugee camp shelters, but even the most robust existing refugee shelters last for only five years, and cannot be adapted to a refugee camp’s changing needs [1]. Startup company Mawa Modular aims to address this problem by designing modular hexagonal shelters, which can be attached together with interconnects to expand a living space, and are built from parts that are easily replaced when they wear. Our team is developing the interconnect system with which the floors of these units can be connected. We selected a rigid design with overlapping tabs that are locked together with pins. Several small-scale prototypes and detailed computational and hand analysis validated this approach against our engineering requirements. In our second quarter, we built two types of prototypes to test assembly, weatherproofing, and loading of our design. With a large wooden prototype, we showed that the interconnect was easily assemblable even when the components were weighted and when the assemblers had little familiarity with the design. Using a small-scale steel prototype, we then showed that the interconnect design could support our required loading, and identified areas where improved sealing would be necessary. These real-world tests came in conjunction with more detailed mathematical models of our design. In our future work, we recommend testing of a full-scale steel prototype as well as more detailed thermal and DFM analysis of our design.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date modified | March 16, 2022; December 5, 2022 |
| Publication date | March 16, 2022; 2022 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Hall-Zazueta, Marion |
|---|---|
| Author | Fay, Aidan |
| Author | Zerbe, Andrew |
| Sponsor | Mawa Modular |
Subjects
| Subject | Mechanical engineering |
|---|---|
| Subject | Refugee housing |
| Subject | Modular |
| Genre | Text |
| Genre | Report |
Bibliographic information
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- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC).
Preferred citation
- Preferred citation
- Hall-Zazueta, M., Fay, A., and Zerbe, A. (2022). Design Considerations for Hexagonal Refugee Shelters. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/by951wg6069
Collection
ME170 Mechanical Engineering Design
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