Design and fabrication of multi-patch elastic geodesic grid structures

摘要: Elastic geodesic grids (EGG) are lightweight structures that can be deployed to approximate designer-provided free-form surfaces. Initially, the grids are perfectly flat, during deployment, a curved shape emerges, as grid elements bend and twist. Their layout is based on networks of geodesic curves and is found geometrically. Encoded in the planar grids is the intrinsic shape of the design surface. Such structures may serve purposes like free-form sub-structures, panels, sun and rain protectors, pavilions, etc. However, so far the EGG have only been investigated using a generic set of design surfaces and small-scale desktop models. Some limitations become apparent when considering more sophisticated design surfaces, like from free-form architecture. Due to characteristics like high local curvature or non-geodesic boundaries, they may be captured only poorly by a single EGG.We show how decomposing such …