P. Eigenraam
Please Note
11 records found
1
As technology advances, architects often employ innovative, non-standard shapes in their designs for the fast-growing number of high-rise buildings. Conversely, climate change is bringing about an increasing number of dangerous wind events causing damage to buildings and their surroundings. These factors further complicate the already difficult field of structural wind analysis. Current methods for calculating structural wind response, such as the Eurocode, do not provide methods for unconventional building shapes or, in the case of physical wind tunnel test and in-depth computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation, they are prohibitively expensive and time-consuming. Thus, wind load analysis is often relegated to late in the design process. This paper presents the development of a computational method to analyze the effect of wind on the structural behavior of a 3D building model and optimize the external geometry to reduce those effects at an early design phase. It combines CFD, finite-element analysis (FEA), and an optimization algorithm in the popular parametric design tool, Grasshopper. This allows it to be used in an early design stage for performance-based design exploration in complement to the more traditional late-stage methods outlined above. After developing the method and testing the timeliness and precision of the CFD, and FEA portions on case study buildings, the tool was able to output an optimal geometry as well as a database of improved geometric options with their corresponding performance for the wind loading.
This article describes a collaborative and interdisciplinary initiative aiming the design, optimization, and construction of a water tower prototype for the victims of a natural disaster. The students of Architecture of Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Poland, were challenged to use paper tubes to provide a design solution with enough strength to be used in a post-earthquake scenario. After the initial designs, seismic response of the proposed towers was evaluated using a custom-made shaking table. The selected tower was then studied parametrically to obtain the most suitable geometry, in terms of preventing overlapping of building parts and easiness of construction. The final three-day intense process of construction and assembling of a 1:3 scale tower prototype provided the researchers and students with insights about connection details when using paper tubes. The initiative continues to explore the potential of applying pro-ecological material for temporary facilities covering basic needs after natural disasters.
Shaping Forces
Review of two Bridge Design Methodologies towards Architectural and Structural Symbiosis
ShArc
A Shell that is an Arc as well
Practical implications of deforming a flat mould surface into a double-curved shape. Proposal for processing concrete elements with a complex double-curved geometry in an efficient and accurate manner using parametric, associative modelling.
Reverse engineering of free form shell structures
From point cloud to finite element model