Creasing the British Museum: Topology Finding of Crease Patterns for Shell Structures

• Oval, Robin ^[2] ; Mesnil, Romain ^[3] ; Mele, Tom Van ^[1] ; Baverel, Olivier ^[4] ; Block, Philippe ^[5]
  1. [1] Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich

     Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich

     Zürich, Suiza

     
  2. [2] Assistant Professor, TU Delft
  3. [3] Assistant Professor, Ecole des Ponts ParisTech
  4. [4] Ecole des Ponts ParisTech
  5. [5] Professor, ETH Zurich

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• Localización: Journal of the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures, ISSN-e 1996-9015, ISSN 1028-365X, Vol. 65, Nº. 1, 2024, págs. 44-56
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Several structural systems rely on a specific hierarchy between their constitutive elements, which results in topological constraints on the feasible patterns that can describe them. Folded, corrugated, or creased surface structures require this bipartition, also called two-colouring, between independent wavy and smooth directions. Finding a valid pattern for complex design problems is not straightforward and identifying relevant ones is important as creasing can either strengthen or weaken a structure. This paper presents a way of tackling such a design problem, by focusing on the roof of the Great Courtyard of the British Museum, revisiting this structure with a creased shell to increase its bending stiffness in the key directions. The methodology includes two-colour topology finding of corrugated patterns, parametric structural analysis, and simple structural optimisation through data analysis for topological combination, which opens new research avenues for performance-informed topological exploration.