Geometric Guidance for the Deployment of Elastic Geodesic Grids

Elastic gridshells are advanced free-form structures enabling curved target shapes and material-efficient large spans. This paper focuses on a novel type of gridshells recently proposed employing a scissor-like deployment mechanism. While recent form-finding advancements have produced fascinating outcomes, a significant challenge arises when architecturally implementing such mechanisms: for the realization of real-world structures, professional FEA is necessary. However, performing Finite Element simulations of these structures proves surprisingly complex due to the requirement of simulating the deployment – a task nearly unachievable using uninformed approaches. Therefore, geometric guidance of the highly elastic gridshells while simulating the expansion is essential. Present solutions to this predicament primarily involve rudimentary trial-and-error methods, suitable only for the most basic shapes. We propose a solution involving the provision of geometric guidance via sequences of linear displacements synchronized with a universal time parameter. When applied to chosen positions, this allows for multi-step gridshell deployment and successfully avoids undesirable buckling issues. We conclude with successful demonstrations of our method, anticipating our work to pave the way for further quantitative explorations of these intriguing structures.