Compression vaults with ruled surfaces and robotic abrasive wire cutting.
Pedro Martins
An initial study for the design of compression vaults, tailored for robotic abrasive wire cutting of limestone.
The vault design follows a traditional parametric design process, with a general mesh surface with even valence vertices, with its funicular geometry determined with kangaroo. The mesh faces are sorted into strips along the ground connecting direction and the strip edges are rebuilt into curved lines, with coincident edges. The lines are then used to build the ruled strips of a surface. Surface thickness is derived from projecting these strips along surface normals.
A couple of design experiments were conducted with 3 and 5 sides, with continuous and discontinuous voussoir thickness.