The concept of adaptive and morphing structures has gained considerable attention in the recent years in many fields of engineering. In civil engineering very few practical applications are reported to date however. Non-conventional structural concepts like deployable, inflatable and morphing structures may indeed provide innovative solutions to some of the problems that the construction industry is being called to face. To give some examples, searches for low-energy consumption or even energy-harvesting green buildings are amongst such problems. This paper first presents a review of the above problems and technologies, which shows how the solution to these problems requires a multidisciplinary approach, involving the integration of architectural and engineering disciplines. The discussion continues with the presentation of a possible application of two adaptive and dynamically morphing structures which are proposed for the realization of an acoustic envelope. The core of the two applications is the use of a novel optimization process which leads the search for optimal solutions by means of an evolutionary technique while the compatibility of the resulting configurations of the adaptive envelope is ensured by the virtual force density method.
The evolution of the railway traffic during the last century is studied as preliminary step towards the estimation of the remaining service life of a historical bridge. The selected case study concerns the El Ourit Bridge, designed in 1889 by Gustave Eiffel and located close to the town of Tlemcen, in Algeria. A finite element model of the structure is built and the response of the bridge to train-crossing loads is numerically evaluated with the purpose of identifying the element most affected by stress variations. The Palmgren-Miner accumulation model is used to quantify the fatigue damage in this element. A limit state function based on this criterion is formulated; then, a fully probabilistic approach is adopted by assuming that the stress amplitude, the fatigue strength and the damage threshold value play the role of random variables. The obtained results are discussed in order to evaluate the residual service life of the bridge.
Deployable structures have been developed for many different applications from space to mechanical and civil engineering. In the paper the general concepts of deployable structures, combining static and kinematic behaviour are presented first, also discussing their relationships with adaptive and variable geometry structures. Reported applications to civil engineering and architecture are then reviewed and categorized. The characteristics of the following systems are summarized : 1. Pneumatic Structures. 2. Tensegrity Structures. 3. Scissor-like Structures. 4. Rigid Foldable Origami. 5. Mutually Supported Structures. The problems of form finding, direct and inverse kinematics, actuation and self-deployability for some of the most interesting among the above structural types are then discussed in the paper. Some examples involving rigid foldable origami and mutually supported structures are finally presented.
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