Talk by Stefan Pillwein on “Elastic Geodesic Grids and Their Planar to Spatial Deployment”
Wednesday 10 March 2021, 11:00 am – online.
Abstract: Elastic geodesic grids are a novel type of planar–to–spatial deployable structures. They are designed to approximate designer provided free-form surfaces and erected by deploying them. Initially, the grids are perfectly flat, during deployment, grid elements are forced to bend and twist and a curved shape emerges. The layout of a grid is based on a network of geodesic curves. The method encodes the shape of the design surface into the planar grid layout. Such elastic structures combine physics and aesthetics, they are easy–to–deploy, easy–to–fabricate, and approximate curved shapes. They may serve purposes like free-form sub-structures, panels, sun and rain protectors, pavilions, etc.
The talk will present the design approach of such grids, challenges specific to this kind of deployable structures, and fabricated examples.
Bio: Stefan Pillwein is a research assistant in the interdisciplinary research group Applied Geometry at TU Wien. After completing his civil-engineering studies at TU Wien, he switched to the faculty of mathematics to work on elastic free-form structures.
