Concurrent, computational design and modelling of structural, coreless-wound building components

Abstract

Coreless filament winding extends established industrial processes, enabling the fabrication of building parts with minimal formwork. Since the part's final geometry is unknown until completed, it creates uncertainties for design and engineering. Existing architectural design workflows are insufficient, and industrial software packages cannot capture the complexity of self-deforming fibres to model complex fibre layups. This research introduces a feedback-based computational method conceived as four development cycles to design and evaluate fibre layups of large-scale architectural building components, and a multi-scalar digital-physical design and evaluation toolset to model and evaluate them at multiple resolutions. The universal applicability of the developed methods is showcased by two different architectural fibre structures. The results show how the systematization of methods and toolset allow for increased design flexibility and deeper integration of interdisciplinary collaborators. They constitute an important step towards a consolidated co-design methodology and demonstrate the potential to simultaneously co-evolve design and evaluation methods.