Possible future applications: Structural Skin

I expect that double curved surfaces are feasible to be built based on radiolarian surface structures.

Two proposals.....What's best?!

In both cases the focus of the proposals do not really lie in the spatial quality of the pavilion, but, for this course, more in the structural beauty of a built object. The result will not be a fully designed pavilion. But rather a structural object testing if my hypothesis is correct. Stating that:
1) the in approximitely 600 milion years evoluated natural forms/structures are enough to achieve pure beauty in an architectural context.
2) these by nature evoluated structures are able, after adjusting them with respect to other force impacts, to function with the same level of efficiency in architectural circumstances.

Proposal One - focus: STRUCTURAL SKIN


- magnify the rad. web structure so that it would be big enough to become a pavilion.
- add additional support elements in order to keep the pavilion standing. (inspire the shape on other rad. skeleton types)
- Fix these additional support element(s) as a boundary condition.
- try optimizing the rad. tesselation in order to achieve a structural skin (gc diana loop)
- the topology of the structural skin would be the input from the radiolarian side of research, while the additional support would be one of the architectural inputs.

Proposal Two - focus: MAIN LOAD BEARING STRUCTURE



- build the main structure based on rad. in gc
- test loop with diana to adjust the structure for building environment
- then add the tesselation. and optimize on the field of: using the least amount of material.

Intention Midterm presentation

I'm planning to give my midterm presentation for next monday the following contents:

1. Hypothesis - research questions - testing
2. Input & output of research
3. Architectural input
4. Radiolarian input
5. G.C. sketch
6. Plan for the next weeks

After I spoke to Michela, Andrew/Elisa and Andre last thursday, I concluded after taking a little time to process their input, to keep the architectural image more in mind while proceding my research. I don't want to focus only on the tesselation of surfaces anymore, without having an architectural image of the output. But more on a complete spatial structure of a pavilion. I will keep in mind the possibilities of tesselating the surfaces and the knowledge I gathered on this specific subject. And apply them later on.

Exploring rules to be used in scripting

Set of rules:

• At each junction meet 3 lines. sum of angles equals concequently 360 degrees.
  
• lines are always perpendicular to main branch.
• wire frame consists of pentagons and hexagons
• all angles between all lines are < 180 degrees
  
• scale of polygons can relatively vary with a ratio of 1:2
  

Optimizing tool:

• use the least total distance of lines to cover the surface
  
• achieve the optimal configuration of pentagons perpendicular to main branch, pentagons and hexagons in between the boundaries of the main branches.
• the surface of polygons is always outlined by the main branches. these will be the independent variables in GC.
  

Principles occuring in radiolarian structures

Radiolarian structure analysis & basic principles:

the radiolarian structure (type: Litarachnium) I want to work with, can be abstacted in a basic set of a main skeleton structure, connected to a wireframe of hexagons and pentagons.
The first will be the input of the computational optimizing tool and the lather will be the output, reconfigurated by the computational optimizing tool. Please take a look at the next image for more explaination.



basic principles of litharachnium_polyhydrons

The C60 molecular structure is based on the same principle of the combination of hexa- and pentagonal surface parts. Please take a look at the next illustrations.


Icosahedral global minimal structures
(http://physchem.ox.ac.uk/~doye/jon/structures/Morse/paper/node6.html)

Process of transformation:

1. accept the fact that this structure functions optimal for this type of radiolarion in its own environment (to prove it in diana or GC (??) will cause a time problem).
2. Apply wind forces and dead weight on the same structure. analyse what the problem areas will be in the main structure. and re-define a new main structure to use as input.
3. create the model and the basic rules in GC. Implement the loop tool.
4. Re-arrrange and optimize the wireframe according to the new input (basic structure) with help of the finite elements loop tool. The loop tool will help to find the optimal configurations of the hexa- and pentagonal wireframe in combination with the new basic structure.

Possible future applications:

it will be able to import any basic shape of main skeleton into GC - loop tool. The tool will find the optimal configuation of the hexa- and pentagonal wireframe of sub beams.

Final final final goal:

Designing/building a pavilion constructed out of silicon (glass) and some type of raisin. Because, if my hypothesis* appears to be true, I would like to search for a way of building a structure in radiolarian style. And that would hypothetically be in a glass composite.

*Adjusted (has to be reformulated) Hypothesis:

It will be feasible to build a structure of a pavilion out of a glass-raisin composite (tested in Diana), if the basic principles of this specific type of radiolari are extracted, re-defined and optimized via a computational tool in GC.

Notes:

note 1: I'm planning to contact Fred Veer in order to discuss the materialization of glass-raisin. For this course I want to test the optimal structure materialized in glass making use of a Diana simulation. In order to test my hypothesis!

note 2: I also did try to understand an algorithm used to solve an issue called the Traveling salesman problem (TSP) using Simulated Annealing. This algorithm optimizes a travelling path.
Via the following link you can do a little game, using Simulated Annealing, to understand the principle.

http://www.math.uu.nl/people/beukers/anneal/anneal.html

I'm expecting that the loop tool in GC also applies a similar algorithm. is this right Michela?

note 3: today I visited Jaap Kaandorp, he is a professor in biology and works at the computational science department of the science faculty of the university of Amsterdam. He explained me quite some interesting principles concerning micro structures, like sponges and radiolaria. He helped me to get a little bit deeper into the subject and that made me able to extract some usefull principles to work on during this course.

Method of modelling

I've decided to start modelling using lines and points in G.C. (taking Ardrew's advise into account)

Logarithmic Spiral?!

Yesterday evening I've spoken to John Videler, a professor in maritime zoology (RUG). He pointed out that there are some interesting basis principles which are still not clarified by scientific research. One of them is:

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/LogarithmicSpiral.html

I'm considering this as an option for further research. The principle could be parametrisized in G.C and try to find out why this form seems to be a general principle in nature. Is there a link to radiolaria? And does it have the same qualities applied in the field of architecture?