Final results of curvature comparison

Below you find a spreadsheet with the results of the shape comparison for the test surface:

Improved model with fixed shape

One of the questions after analyzing the previous model of the proposed system was: how to fix the surface in its shape after bending it into a certain curvature?

One of the solutions for this could be to use precisely positioned holes instead of the slot holes I used in the previous model. The slot holes made it possible to attach the panels into a certain configuration and bend it into the desired curvature afterwards. Precisely positioned holes don't give this opportunity and therefore each panel has to be bended into the desired curvature before placing them in the configuration. The proposed bending principle, based on wires, can be used to bend plates into a certain (elastica) curve by the introducing forces at the control points.

To test whether the use of precise of exactly positioned holes is enough to fix the configuration of curved panels in its position I build a new digital and physical model (you can find some pictures of it below).

It is clearly visible that the shape is fixed in position after the panels are bended, placed in a configuration and joined by nuts and bolts. At some edges an unwanted additional effect occurs as result of the overlap (see picture below).

I think it is possible to reduce this effect by decreasing the overlapdistance. I will try this in an adapted version of this model.

Adapted version of multi-criteria analysis

Hereby the adapted version of the multi-criteria analysis:

Measuring device

On Friday I made the before mentioned physical measuring device. It consists out of a table construction with a grid of holes in the top plate and an apparatus for measuring the distance between the bottom side of this plate and the underlying surface model. Below you can find some pictures of it:

First proposal for setup multicriteria analysis

First results for surface comparison

Below are the results shown of the comparison between the digital surfaces. The next step is building a physical model of the reference plane in order to measure the distances between the grid points on this plane and the physical surface.

Model for curvature comparison