Bending-Active Plates – Doctoral Thesis
2017
La Magna, R.
Bending-Active Plates – Strategies for the
induction of curvature through the means
of elastic bending of plate-based structures.
University of Stuttgart, 2017
Commonly referred to as bending-active, the term has come to describe a wide variety of systems that employ the large deformation of their constituent components as a primary shape-forming strategy. It is generally impossible to separate the structure from its geometry, and this is even more true for bending-active systems. Placed at the intersection between geometry, design and engineering, the principle objective of this thesis is to develop an understanding of the structural and architectural potential of bending-active systems beyond the established typologies which have been investigated so far. The main focus is set on systems that make use of surface-like elements as principle building blocks, as opposed to previous and existing projects that predominantly employed linear components such as rods and laths. This property places the analysed test cases and developed prototypes within a specific category of bending-active systems known as bending-active plate structures.
