Prestress and its application to shell, fabric, and cable net structures
Doktorsavhandling, 2021
This thesis aims for an increased understanding of prestressing and its application to shell, fabric, and cable net structures and improved means for their design. It provides a broad overview of prestressing, expanding beyond the common perception of prestress being limited to concrete structures, and shell structures, focusing on applications within architecture. The scope is the combination of prestressing and shells, and it addresses three main research questions: (1) Can any shell be prestressed? For those that can, what is the meaning and influence of prestressing?; (2) How can prestressed shells be form-found using analytical and numerical approaches?; and (3) How can prestress in shells be represented and chosen, aspiring for efficient structural performance?
Appended papers A-F help answer these questions, and the thesis contributes to architectural and structural design and structural optimisation and applies differential geometry. It provides approaches for the form-finding of gridshells containing both tension and compression elements (Paper A) and of minimal surfaces (Paper C and D). Paper B concludes that a sphere cannot be prestressed, but a torus can. Paper E extends the Williams and McRobie (2016) discontinuous Airy stress function from flat structures to curved shells, allowing moments and shear forces in edge beams of shell structures to be quantified and appropriate prestressing chosen. Paper D uses a discrete Airy stress function and discusses the structural behaviour of shells with negative Gaussian curvature loaded with patch loads. Paper D studies Eduardo Torroja's prestressed concrete Alloz aqueduct, concluding that longitudinal prestressing may reduce the wall bending moments and that, at the limit, the channel act as a cylindrical membrane-action shell rather than of an Euler-Bernoulli beam, enabling thinner cross-sections.
Geometric stiffness
Form finding
Conceptual design
Stress pattern
Engineering
Prestress
Architecture
Structuraldesign
Författare
Alexander Sehlström
Chalmers, Arkitektur och samhällsbyggnadsteknik, Arkitekturens teori och metod
Unloaded prestressed shell formed from a closed surface unattached to any supports
IASS Symposium 2019 - 60th Anniversary Symposium of the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures; Structural Membranes 2019 - 9th International Conference on Textile Composites and Inflatable Structures, FORM and FORCE,;Vol. 2019(2019)p. 167-174
Paper i proceeding
Tensioned principle curvature cable nets on minimal surfaces
Advances in Architectural Geometry 2021,;(2021)p. 84-107
Paper i proceeding
The analytic and numerical form-finding of minimal surfaces and their application as shell structures
Proceedings of the IASS Annual Symposium 2020/21 and the 7th International Conference on Spatial Structures,;(2021)
Paper i proceeding
Design of tension structures and shells using the Airy stress function
International Journal of Space Structures,;Vol. 37(2022)p. 94-106
Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift
Should Torroja’s prestressed concrete Alloz aqueduct be thought of as a beam or a shell?
Engineering Structures,;Vol. 264(2022)
Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift
This thesis aims for an increased understanding of prestressing and its application to shells and thereby improve their design. It provides a broad overview of prestressing and shell structures, focusing on those within architecture. It summarises research presented in six appended papers, which propose design approaches for prestressed shells and insights on their structural behaviour. Some develop excising form-finding methods whereby the curved geometry of a prestressed shell can be determined using a computer algorithm. Others focus on graphical design methods that allow the analysis of shells by 'folding' and 'cutting' a surface representing the internal stress state. One paper investigates the structural behaviour of the elegant prestressed concrete Alloz aqueduct designed by Eduardo Torroja in 1939.
Ämneskategorier
Arkitekturteknik
Teknisk mekanik
Arkitektur
Geometri
Husbyggnad
ISBN
978-91-7905-605-6
Doktorsavhandlingar vid Chalmers tekniska högskola. Ny serie: 5071
Utgivare
Chalmers
Room EE in house EDIT at Chalmers, Hörsalsvägen 11; see https://maps.chalmers.se/#c8bdea0e-9bda-47a1-9b82-d78e9af300ae
Opponent: Caitlin T. Mueller, Associate Professor, Digital Structures Research Group, Department of Architecture, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA