Composite materials for gridshells

Since 2004

The choice of appropriate materials for elastic gridshells is at the root of the development of these structures at the Navier laboratory, but things actually came out the other way round. Historically, the expertise of the laboratory is material science and we were looking for “taylor made” applications for composites materials, for applications where they might replace traditional materials. The structural typology that came out after a few months is elastic gridshells.

Description of the research

The question of which materials for elastic gridshells is at the roots of the development of these structures at the Navier laboratory, but things actually came out the other way round. Historically, the expertise of the laboratory was material science and we were looking for “taylor made” applications for composites materials, for applications where composites might definitively replace other traditional like in the sport and leisure industry. The structural typology that came out after a few months is elastic gridshells.

A first study on the selection of the most adapted materials for grid shell and also on the design criteria of such materials in applications with permanent bending stresses was conducted by Douthe in his PhD thesis and in (Douthe 2010). A detailed analysis of the failure mode and of creep behaviour was further carried out by Kotelnikova-Weiler in her PhD thesis and in (Barboura 2010) (Barboura 2011) (Kotelnikova-Weiler 2013). A paper summarising how to chose the most adapted material for a gridshell was done in (Kotelnikova-Weiler 2013 IJSS) in collaboration with Gengnagel team in Berlin.