Background and aim:
Masonry/Earthy structures can be made with sustainable materials while offering strong structural properties, especially if designed as compression-only structures. Optimal masonry structures might take complex geometric shapes that present computational design and structural validation challenges. We aim to derive optimal shapes directly based on a gradient descent optimization procedure as a constructible structure.
Research question:
- How to computationally find optimal catenary forms and approximate them with modular brick/block structures?
Design objective:
- To design and prototype a computational finite element modeler for masonry structures.
Methods:
- Shape Optimization (req. Calculus, Linear Algebra, etc.)
- Computational Geometry & Topology
- Finite Element Analysis
- Computer Programming (Python or C#)