In order to completely darken the required area in the medical core area of the envihab research facility, elnic developed two folding roofs and installed them on site. They have a dimension of 24.4m x 3.4m x 0.2m and 16.0m x 3.7m x 0.2m.
The construction is based on a skeleton of galvanized steel profiles, which are planked with 2 cm thick aluminium sandwich panels. To weatherproof the sealing and for optical rounding of this frame is shrink-wrapped in a bright white special film of 1.5 mm thickness.
The complete construction is made as a stable lightweight design, which enables the flaps to induce little force in the steel structure of the building and can still be opened or closed up to a wind speed of 6 Beaufort.
Each flap has 4 or 3 synchronized rotary actuators which allow the roof to be moved 195° in under 3 minutes. During this time, people are warned by means of signal light and siren not to go inside the swivel range. Darkening the rooms underneath for 100% can be achieved by a 5 cm thick gasket.
The complete controls and programming, as well as visualization using a touch display inside the switchboard cabinet comes were made by elnic. Additionally, for monitoring and control purposes, the whole system is connected via an EIB interface to the envihab building system.