Developing and testing a novel manufacturing method for complex geometry thin-walled GFRC panels by fabricating a 10 m high, self-supporting GFRC hyperbolic shell

The main bottleneck during the manufacture of complex geometry thin-walled GFRC structures is the time taken to make the timber or CNC machined moulds for each panel. Complex geometries are comprised of many unique panel forms and the extensive time and high costs of their manufacture often prevents their architectural intent from being fully...

A Comprehensive Workflow for High Resolution 3D Solar Photovoltaic Potential Mapping in Dense Urban Environment: A Case Study on Campus of Delft University of Technology

Photovoltaic (PV) technology is the most promising renewable energy source to be integrated on urban building surfaces. Modeling and simulating urban PV systems pose more challenges than the conventional ones installed in open field due to rich urban morphology. Herein, a comprehensive workflow to estimate urban solar PV potential is...

Advancing the architectural application of complex geometry GFRC

Glass Fibre Reinforced Concrete (GFRC) has been developed over the last 50 years into the material it is today. GFRC is mostly used as a cladding material and to a lesser extent for structural elements. This paper examines the challenges of using freeform thin-walled GFRC elements in the design and fabrication of a self-supporting artwork. The...

Double-curved precast concrete elements: Research into technical viability of the flexible mould method

The production of precast, concrete elements with complex, double-curved geometry is expensive due to the high costcosts of the necessary moulds and the limited possibilities for mould reuse. Currently, CNC-milled foam moulds are the solution applied mostly in projects, offering good aesthetic performance, but also resulting in waste of material...

Kine-Mould: Manufacturing technology for curved architectural elements in concrete

The production of architectural elements with complex geometry is challenging for concrete manufacturers. Computer-numerically-controlled (CNC) milled foam moulds have been applied frequently in the last decades, resulting in good aesthetical performance. However, still the costs are high and a large volume of waste is produced. This paper...

Production of Curved Precast Concrete Elements for Shell Structures and Free-form Architecture using the Flexible Mould Method

Free-form buildings tend to be expensive. By optimizing the production process, economical and well-performing precast concrete structures can be manufactured. In this paper, a method is presented that allows producing highly accurate double curved-elements without the need for milling two expensive mould surfaces per single element. The...

Optimization of the flexible mould process for the production of double-curved concrete elements

Free-form buildings tend to be expensive. By optimizing the production process, economical and wellperforming concrete structures and elements can be manufactured. In this paper, an innovative method is presented that allows producing highly accurate double curved-elements without the need for milling two expensive mould surfaces per single...

The use of SCC and textile reinforcement

In an earlier article (CPI issue of August 2011 [1]) a method was presented for producing precast curved panels with a thickness of a few centimeters using the 'flexible mould method'. This method is the central theme in the PhD study of the first author on the realization of freeform architecture in concrete. The concrete panels manufactured...

Reinforcement Toolbox, a Parametric Reinforcement Modelling Tool for Curved Surface Structures

This paper presents a computational strategy and parametric modelling toolbox which aim at enhancing the design- and production process of reinforcement in freeform curved surface structures. The computational strategy encompasses the necessary steps of raising an architectural curved surface model of a concrete building to production level in...

Frei geformte Betonbauteile: Finden einer Fertigungsmethode

Due to the complexity of the freeform shapes it is often not possible to distinguish any repetitive elements in freeform buildings at all. Most freeform building designs consist of many single or double curved surfaces which require complex shapes for the mould and element edges. Since the costs of the moulds (formwork) for precast concrete make...

On the treatment of complex geometries in a Cartesian grid flow solver with the level set method

We present a new Cartesian grid method for the computation of incompressible viscous flows in irregular geometries. The irregular boundary is implicitly represented by its signed distance function (the level-set function) and, by using level-set calculus tools, we are able to preserve the Cartesian structure of the discretized Navier-Stokes...

Large Eddy Simulation of the flow around a wind turbine blade

Large Eddy Simulations (LES) of incompressible turbulent flow around a wind turbine blade at a chord Reynolds number of 5000 are performed using high-order spectral/hp element method (SEM). The method and the early results of the simulations are presented. Some requirements with respect to mesh generation for the SEM concerning h- and p...