A Method for Generating Regular Grid Configurations on Free-From Surfaces for Structurally Sound Geodesic Gridshells
Judyta Maria Cichocka, Szymon Łoj, Marta Magdalena Wloczyk · eCAADe proceedings · 2021
Gridshells are highly efficient, lightweight structures which can span long distances with minimal use of material (Vassallo & Malek 2017). One of the most promising and novel categories of gridshells are bending-active (elastic) systems (Lienhard & Gengnagel 2018), which are composed of flexible members (Kuijenhoven & Hoogenboom 2012). Timber elastic gridshells can be site-sprung or sequentially erected (geodesic). While a lot of research focus is on the site-sprung ones, the methods for design of sequentially-erected geodesic gridshells remained underdeveloped (Cichocka 2020). The main objective of the paper is to introduce a method of generating regular geodesic grid patterns on free-form surfaces and to examine its applicability to design structurally feasible geodesic gridshells. We adopted differential geometry methods of generating regular bidirectional geodesic grids on free-form surfaces. Then, we compared the structural performance of the regular and the irregular grids of the same density on three free-form surfaces. The proposed method successfully produces the regular geodesic grid patterns on the free-form surfaces with varying curvature-richness. Our analysis shows that gridshells with regular grid configurations perform structurally better than those with irregular patterns. We conclude that the presented method can be readily used and can expand possibilities of application of geodesic gridshells.