A bending-active twisted-arch plywood structure: computational design and fabrication of the FlexMaps Pavilion
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A bending‑active twisted‑arch plywood structure: computational design and fabrication of the FlexMaps Pavilion Francesco Laccone1,2 · Luigi Malomo1 · Jesús Pérez3,4 · Nico Pietroni1,5 · Federico Ponchio1 · Bernd Bickel4 · Paolo Cignoni1 Received: 8 November 2019 / Accepted: 5 August 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Bending-active structures are able to efficiently produce complex curved shapes from flat panels. The desired deformation of the panels derives from the proper selection of their elastic properties. Optimized panels, called FlexMaps, are designed such that, once they are bent and assembled, the resulting static equilibrium configuration matches a desired input 3D shape. The FlexMaps elastic properties are controlled by locally varying spiraling geometric mesostructures, which are optimized in size and shape to match specific bending requests, namely the global curvature of the target shape. The design pipeline starts from a quad mesh representing the input 3D shape, which defines the edge size and the total amount of spirals: every quad will embed one spiral. Then, an optimization algorithm tunes the geometry of the spirals by using a simplified pre-computed rod model. This rod model is derived from a non-linear regression algorithm which approximates the non-linear behavior of solid FEM spiral models subject to hundreds of load combinations. This innovative pipeline has been applied to the project of a lightweight plywood pavilion named FlexMaps Pavilion, which is a single-layer piecewise twisted arch that fits a bounding box of 3.90x3.96x3.25 meters. This case study serves to test the applicability of this methodology at the architectural scale. The structure is validated via FE analyses and the fabrication of the full scale prototype. Keywords Bending-active · Form-finding · Digital fabrication · Simulation · CNC milling · Plywood · Spiral · Mesostructure
1 Introduction Bending-active structures produce efficiently complex curved shapes made of flat or straight elements [1]. To this purpose, these are brought into a deformation state of elastic bending. In the past, such structural systems were empirically explored and adopted in vernacular architecture contexts because of their efficiency. For instance arches and domes were produced by curving branches or reeds. After being neglected for years, nowadays the availability of simulation techniques, which gives control of
form-finding and verification processes, renews the appeal of such lightweight and efficient structures [2–7]. While in the past the main advantage was to have a cheap technology to build even doubly curved surfaces, nowadays the main reason to adopt this technique lies in the reduced weight and the economy of producing flat panes regardless of the curvature they will have once installed [1]. The bending-active technology characterizes different structural types such as plate shells [8], hybrids composed of membranes with elastically bent battens [9], and various types of adaptive and elastic kinetic structures
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