Design and fabrication of multi-patch elastic geodesic grid structures

Elastic geodesic grids (EGG) are lightweight structures that can be deployed to approximate designer-provided free-form surfaces. Initially, the perfectly flat, during deployment, a curved shape emerges, as grid elements bend and twist. Their layout is based on networks of curves found geometrically. Encoded in planar intrinsic design surface. Such may serve purposes like sub-structures, panels, sun rain protectors, pavilions, etc. However, so far EGG have only been investigated using generic set surfaces small-scale desktop models. Some limitations become apparent when considering more sophisticated surfaces, from architecture. Due characteristics high local curvature or non-geodesic boundaries, they captured poorly by single EGG. We show how decomposing such into smaller patches serves an effective strategy tackle these problems. furthermore elastic fact well suited for this approach. Finally, we present showcase model some meters size discuss practical aspects concerning fabrication, size, easy deployment.