Before I am sharing what I have learned at the symposium of IASS, I would like to use one paragraph to explain why it took me so long to update the post. My father got a brain stem stroke in the summer, which stunned all my family members. He had stayed in ICU for weeks. Later, his situation became stable and was transferred to a nursing home. He currently can only blink and slightly nod his head without other controllable movements. For whoever reading this message, take care of your health, especially your blood pressure!
Let’s back to the academic stuff. I was lucky enough to join the “Form and Force” the joint symposium of the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures (IASS) and Structural Membrane. I presented my latest research on form-finding with radial basis function network, a numerical method can represent arbitrary smooth mathematical functions. The method is applied to solve the Pucher’s equation, the governor equation that guarantees the equilibrium in three dimensions. Not only vertical but also horizontal loads are considered. Here is an animation showing how the thrust surface altered when horizontal loads are introduced in all directions.
The thrust surface (blue surface) changes its position while the horizontal force is coming at various direction. The upper and lower envelopes (gray surfaces) is gradually enlarged while the magnitude of the horizontal force (gray arrow) is increasing.
Chiang, Y.-C., Borgart, A., & Li, Q. (2019). Finding Membrane Shells Subjected to Horizontal Body Forces with Radial Basis Functions. In Proceedings of the IASS Annual Symposium 2019 – Structural Membranes 2019. Barcelona.
ChiangYC 