Active bending to facilitate the installation process of membranes in statically self-locking spatial structures - comparison of two case studies

Abstract

This paper presents the compressed usage of elastic material in statically self-locking configurations facilitating the assembly of hybrid structures based on the steady state balance. The full scale realized case study 01 “A Cloud for fresh Snow” - a commissioned research for the Austrian Neuschnee-Gmbh - is compared with the case study 02 “The violin unit”. In the case study 01 the classical type of bending (Indian bow) is applied in a configuration of six elastic members and four minimal surface membranes in the form of a spherical tetrahedron. The other type of active bending – applied in the case study 02 - consists of the phenomenon of the violin bow, where a curved member is bent by tensile forces towards its straight form. Both case studies have in common that their patterned membranes can be installed easily without tension-forces in a first step and that these membranes can be comfortably pre-stressed in their determined form without additional tools in a second step.