Vellore :

House on Mars will be in cuboidal form with a curved roof! With Mangalyan all set to land on the red planet, a group of students of VIT University here have come up with a conceptual design to construct houses for human settlements on Mars.

The curved roof design is to facilitate light from the sky to be positioned appropriately to optimise solar gains.

“The wall in the building comprises Titanium Aluminium alloys, fibre glass and insulating aerogels. This unique man- made fabric associated with a unique building form ensures that the temperature in the dwelling never gets cold below 25 degree Celsius,” Pranav Sanghavi, one of the designers said.

Combining design components with planetary climate for the first time, the students Pranav Sanghavi, Ashutosh Jadeja and Manu Manish Jaiswal along with their guide Prof. Satyajit Ghosh, have sucessfully simulated Martian climate.

They have presented the findings in a research paper, “A nuanced thermal analysis of a proposed living space on Mars” at a conference on Mars at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, U.S.A.

The students pointed out that with Mangalyan the country was poised to be in the forefront of the Martian explorations.

Prof. Ghosh at VIT’s School of Mechanical and Building Sciences, said the student team had successfully simulated the Martian climate with a state-of-the-art code to help optimise the housing design. ‘As we had mechanical engineers in our team, they presented a robust design using the most sophisticated architectural tools,’ he noted.

The team will soon construct a prototype of the house in the campus, Ghosh added.

VIT chancellor G.Viswanathan appreciated the efforts taken by the team and assured them of all necessary support.

source: http://www.newindianexpress.com / The New Indian Express / Home> States>  Tamil Nadu / by Express News Service / August 03rd, 2014