Patterns for Masonry Vault Design

Robin Oval (1, 2) , Matthias Rippmann (1) , Tom van Mele (1) , Olivier Baverel (3) , Philippe Block (1)

1 ETH Zürich - Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology [Zürich]
2 navier umr 8205 - Laboratoire Navier
3 msa - Matériaux et Structures Architecturés

This paper presents a methodology to generate structural patterns for masonry vault design. First, a quad- dominant block decomposition is proposed based on a medial axis pruning/rebranching method from an input that comprises outer and inner boundaries as well as point and curve features, representing a point load or a crease in the structure, for instance. The meshing and smoothing of the resulting set of patches is straightforward and the mesh densities can be controlled globally and locally. The resulting meshes can be processed for form finding and further optimisation. Second, fabrication-and construction-aware rules to convert these form-found patterns into a tessellation are proposed.

Mots clés: structural design; masonry vaults; meshing; topology; block decomposition; medial axis; tessellation

Domaines: Structures; Autre

Robin Oval, Matthias Rippmann, Tom van Mele, Olivier Baverel, Philippe Block. Patterns for Masonry Vault Design. Annual Symposium of the International Association of Shell and Spatial Structures, 2017, Hamburg, Germany. ⟨hal-01883502⟩