Browsing by Author "Laccone, Francesco"

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    Computational Design of Fabricable Geometric Patterns
    (The Eurographics Association, 2023) Scandurra, Elena; Laccone, Francesco; Malomo, Luigi; Callieri, Marco; Cignoni, Paolo; Giorgi, Daniela; Banterle, Francesco; Caggianese, Giuseppe; Capece, Nicola; Erra, Ugo; Lupinetti, Katia; Manfredi, Gilda
    This paper addresses the design of surfaces as assemblies of geometric patterns with predictable performance in response to mechanical stimuli. We design a family of tileable and fabricable patterns represented as triangle meshes, which can be assembled for creating surface tessellations. First, a regular recursive subdivision of the planar space generates different geometric configurations for candidate patterns, having interesting and varied aesthetic properties. Then, a refinement step addresses manufacturability by solving for non-manifold configurations and sharp angles which would produce disconnected or fragile patterns. We simulate our patterns to evaluate their mechanical response when loaded in different scenarios targeting out-of-plane bending. Through a simple browsing interface, we show that our patterns span a variety of different bending behaviors. The result is a library of patterns with varied aesthetics and predefined mechanical behavior, to use for the direct design of mechanical metamaterials. To assess the feasibility of our approach, we show a pair of fabricated 3D objects with different curvatures.
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    A Computational Tool for the Analysis of 3D Bending-active Structures Based on the Dynamic Relaxation Method
    (The Eurographics Association, 2022) Manolas, Iason; Laccone, Francesco; Cherchi, Gianmarco; Malomo, Luigi; Cignoni, Paolo; Cabiddu, Daniela; Schneider, Teseo; Allegra, Dario; Catalano, Chiara Eva; Cherchi, Gianmarco; Scateni, Riccardo
    The use of elastic deformation of straight or flat structural components for achieving complex 3D shapes has acquired attention from recent computational design works, particularly in architectural geometry. The so-called bending-active structures are built by deforming and restraining the components mutually to form a stable configuration. While the manufacturing of components from flat raw material and their assembly are simple and inexpensive, the complexity lies in the design phase, in which computational tools are required to predict the deformation and forces under a prescribed form-finding load or displacement. Currently, there is a scarcity of open and efficient tools that hinder the design of bending-active structures. This paper proposes and validates an open-source computational tool for predicting the static equilibrium of general bending-active structures in the form of a network of elements using the dynamic relaxation method. We apply our tool to various real-world examples and compare the results to a commercial FEM solver. The proposed tool shows accuracy and good time performance, making it a significant addition to the available open-source structural engineering toolkit.