Design of reconfigurable doubly-curved canopy structure

Abstract

In this paper, a new reconfigurable doubly-curved structure has been developed for a canopy roof. The proposed structure can transform itself to various configurations according to the activity and user requirements. It not only changes its shape from a planar geometry to doubly-curved geometries by means of actuators, but also becomes stable and carries loads. The main differences between proposed structure and similar deployable bar structures are that the proposed structure is more flexible with 2DoF and it requires less number of bars and joints. To obtain the doubly-curved geometry, a novel method has been introduced. After discussing the kinematic behavior of the system, a set of structural analyses are performed in three different geometric configurations of the proposed structure. © 2013 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.