Grid-shell Joint

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Grid-shell Joint

May 2022 - Digital Design & Fabrication

Mentor - Stylianos Dritsas

Team Members - Mudassar Ahmad, Hayley Ho

The brief was to design a 3D joint for a gridshell structure and fabricate it using water-jet (aluminum) and laser cutting (plywood). The strategy taken by our pair was to eliminate the use of screws in favour of dowels. We also aimed for a streamlined and rational aesthetic.

Examples of grid-shell structures. The joint is comprised of four beam elements meeting at a node at different angles. This represents a special connection for a grid-shell design created from a curved design envelope. Therefore, if the joint is solved, in a parametric manner, it may be employed for all nodes of the same grid-shell design.

Plan view of the joint. The slim profile ensures that the joint disappears into a mesh when aggregated into a dome structure.

The initial intent was to minimise material use by reducing the overlapping of parts. The first design passed the shake test. However it was too heavy especially in the centre. To reduce the weight, we explored alternatives to screws.

This was our first dowel iteration. H-shaped key with T-shaped hole. The H-shaped key would be inserted flat and then rotated 90 degrees. The key is then pushed down into the bottom of the T-shaped hole to prevent moving. The connection was not stable and secure.

This was our second dowel iteration. U-shaped key with stopper. The key and the stopper both prevented rotational movement and shifting of the arm. This is our chosen design.

Since our arm dowel worked, we decided to replace the screws in the core with dowels too. In addition to the reduction of weight, there is now 2 less parts per arm.

The nature of the machine required that we made our dowels smaller than the holes they enter. With advice from SUTD's Fabrication Laboratory staff, we settled on a 0.015mm gap.

IKEA-esque diagram drawn by Hayley. The brief called for a joint that can be rapidly assembled. This forced us to simplify the assembly process into 5 steps.

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