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Robot-Aided Fabrication of Light-Weight Structures with Sheet Metal Expansion

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Computer-Aided Architectural Design. "Hello, Culture" (CAAD Futures 2019)

Abstract

This paper presents a novel approach for the creation of metal light-weight self-supporting structures through the employment of metal kerfing and robotic sheet panel expansion. Research objectives focus on the synthesis of material behavior on a local scale and the structural performance on a global scale via advanced computational and robotic methods. There are inherent structural properties to expanded metal sheets which can be employed to achieve an integrated building system without the need for a secondary supporting structure. A computational workflow that integrates Finite Element Analysis, geometrical optimization, and robotic toolpath planning has been developed. This workflow is informed by the parameters of material experimentation on sheet metal kerfing and robotic sheet metal expansion on the local panel scale. The proposed methodology is applied on a range of panels with a custom-built robotic fabrication setup for the design, fabrication, and assembly of a one-to-one scale working prototype.

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Acknowledgements

The work presented is part of the research undertaken at Architectural Association (AA) Summer DLAB 2018. We would like to thank the faculty and students for their great efforts.

Head of AA Visiting School: Christopher Pierce

Head of AA Summer DLAB: Elif Erdine

Faculty: Elif Erdine, Giulio Gianni, Angel Lara Moreira, Alvaro Lopez Rodriguez, Yutao Song, Alican Sungur.

Students: Laura de la Torre, Montei di Matteo, Bryan Edward, Angelina Garipova, Vanda Hajizadeh, Jill Hartley Yokota, Ahmed Hassan, Hsin-Ying Huang, Harun Ishak, Maciej Kanarkowski, Kseniia Kondratovich, Roberto Marin, Sahil Mohan, Elena Nuñez Segura, Rajiv Parekh, In Pun, Francesca Savanco, Hugh Taylor, Ziqing Xu, Fan Yang, Masashi Yaushira.

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Correspondence to Elif Erdine .

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Erdine, E., Gianni, G., Moreira, A.F.L., Rodriguez, A.L., Song, Y., Sungur, A. (2019). Robot-Aided Fabrication of Light-Weight Structures with Sheet Metal Expansion. In: Lee, JH. (eds) Computer-Aided Architectural Design. "Hello, Culture". CAAD Futures 2019. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1028. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8410-3_24

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8410-3_24

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-13-8409-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-13-8410-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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