Symmetric Shape Transformations of Folded Shell Roofs Determining Creative and Rational Shaping of Building Free Forms

Abstract

The paper presents an innovative approach to solving interdisciplinary problems emerging in the design process of building free forms roofed with elastically transformed corrugated shells. The effectiveness and rationality of shaping such free forms and the creativeness in searching for the parametric forms require the application of their regular and symmetric models which have to be derived from the geometric and mechanical properties of the rationally transformed subsequent folds of these shells. Simplified smooth models used for engineering developments and accurate folded models implemented for scientific research have to be created by means of unconventional methods different from those presented in classical courses. Owing to the variety of the forms of the proposed innovative reference tetrahedrons and their parametric description, the algorithms developed by the authors have to be implemented in computer programs. The rationality of the transformed roof shells, revealed in the limitation of the level of the fold’s initial stresses resulting from the shape transformation, and the attractiveness of these forms are achieved by the axial symmetry and contraction of each shell fold at its half-length. The symmetries adopted in the process of modeling such roof shells are also exploited by the discussed new method to obtain coherent unconventional general forms of entire buildings.