Bio-inspired Structural Form Finding And Architectural Design With Vector-based Graphic Statics

For everything in nature,structure is an important factor that affects morphogenesis.When the form violates the laws of mechanics,the natural object will not be able to maintain its stable state under the action of environmental forces,and will eventually face the fate of being eliminated by nature.For architectural design,although structure is not the only element that determines the formation of a form,the mechanical rationality of the structure is the prerequisite for the establishment of the architectural form,and the combination of technology and art above this has always been a proposition that has been widely discussed.In the exploration at the beginning of the twentieth century,represented by Frei Otto,Heinz Isler,and Sergio Musmeci,they inherited the scientific exploration after the Renaissance and employed physical model.The method reproduces the morphological process in the natural,achieves structural knowledge from nature inspiration,and creates lightweight and high-performance structural forms.In a large number of contemporary architectural practices,the decoration and symbolization of building skins have become common phenomena.Part of this is due to the lack of a linguistic system that allows structural mechanics and architectural forms to interact with each other.For architects,how to break away from the shackles of structural type thinking and use structural linguistic system and analysis of natural principles under new technologies to creatively control the relationship between architectural form and structure has become a meaningful topic.For this reason,the development of graphical statics methods in recent years provides a clear technical framework.This prosperous subject was almost forgotten a hundred years ago because of the development of computational methods.In the past two decades,the "intuitiveness","generating" and "operability" of the vector-based graphic statics have reappeared and become a more suitable tool for the integrated design of architecture and structure.In this context,as an architectural oriented study,this thesis starts from two clues: the natural references and structural form-finding,and construct the framework with Vector-based Graphic Statics(VGS).This framework aims to establish a method system for bio-inspired architectural and structural design.For this reason,based on the research on the graphical statics,the thesis summarizes the"linguistic method system" of VGS.This method system is a series of methods to find the equilibrium of structural forms.It is like an intermediary language translating the nature principles into structural forms.It includes methods based on "Geometric operations": "Subdivision method SD","Combinatorial method CM","Projective method PJ";and methods based on "Numerical Calculation": "Equilibrium matrix EM","Combinatorial equilibrium model CEM" ","Force Density Method FD","Layout Topology Optimization Method LO","Interdependency Transformational Method ITF".In order to facilitate architects to use this linguistic method system,the corresponding parametric design plug-in VGS(based on the Rhino grasshopper platform)has been developed as an auxiliary tool to realize the functions of force diagram generation and form-force diagram interdependent transformation in 3D graphic statics.Accordingly,the flexible use of this method system enables the structural principles of nature to be analyzed with form and force diagrams.The research takes "trees","bones",and "spider nets" as examples,and takes "observation of natural prototypes","extraction of structural principles",and "reproduction in new context" as the basic process,and elaborates how these examples provide references for the three structural systems: "vector-active system","section-active system",and "form-active system",and use corresponding form-finding methods.Finally,this research tests the practicability of the introduced method system with a hypothetical design scenario.The final two solutions not only effectively solve the equilibrium problem by reproducing the nature structural principle,but also fully reflect the consideration of the landscape,building function,capacity and other related objects.In summary,with the elaboration of the bio-inspired structural design with vector-based graphic statics framework,this research hopes to present an open and interactive architecture and structure integrated design workflow for architects.This thesis contains five parts:1.Chapters 1～2 introduce research background,the motivation and the review of the related researches of vector-based graphical statics and bio-inspired architecture design.2.Chapter 3 constructs the "linguistic method system" of the research and introduces the principles of VGS.3.Chapters 4～6 is the detail interpretations of nature structural principles extraction and reproduction.With different natural references as the themes,these chapters deduce the entire processes of using the "linguistic method system" to carry out the research of bionic structure.4.Chapter 7 is the case study and verification.It shows the effectiveness and interactivity of this design method with a hypothetical extreme design scenario.5.Chapter 8 is the conclusion and outlook of the research.This thesis is about 142,000 words,with 175 figures.