ARCH 655 Parametric Modeling in Design Project2 (Yang Shen)

Part 1-Beijing Water Cube Sun Path and Radiation Analysis

Sun Path Analysis

1. Import weather data

Here, the College Station Weather is imported into "EPW+STAT" node in Grasshopper.

( import weather data) 

2. Sun Path analysis

The analysis period is set as 8760 hours in one year. The variable of the legend is the dry-bulb temperature. 

(sun path analysis)

(sun path analysis results)

Radiation analysis and optimization

1. Set sky matrix

This step is to create the sky matrix profile which is the input data of radiation analysis.

(sky matrix)

2. Create the target building and context building

I just created outer box of Beijing Water cube as the target building. There are 4 parameters(genome) which are the length, width, height and orientation of building. The surrounding buildings are also created. The green building is the target building and red ones are the context buildings.

(target and context building)

3. Radiation analysis and optimization

The total radiation is the fitness and 4 parameters mentioned before are the genome in the Galapagos. The optimized parameters are 40m, 40.341m, 40m and 104 degree of orientation. Because the ranges of length, width and height are set from 40m to 100m. To minimize the total radiation of this building, the geometry should be smallest one which makes sense.

(radiation analysis and optimization)

(optimization results in Galapagos)

Project2-Part1 YouTube Movie link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXEugCkt6E0

Part 2-Roof structural analysis

Introduction 

The purpose of this part is to use the plug-in from Geometry Gym to do the structural analysis between Rhino/Grasshopper and SAP2000. And the structural geometry would be optimized to minimize one node's displacement by Galapagos. Here are the picture of real structure, plan view and section view. This structure has the main components which are rafters (cantilever parts and back span parts), purlins, backstays, struts and columns. The geometry parameters are: back span height; front height; cantilever length; back span length; backstay offset; column height and purlin spacing.

(real structure)

(plan view)

(section view)

Step1-Create the geometry of structure

1. create midpoint of structure along the ellipse

Use 'ellipse' to create an ellipse with two parametric radius. By default, the original start-end point of ellipse cannot be changed, here by using 'seam' to change the start-end point by different degrees. This start-end point would be my structural mid point.

(midpoint of structure along the ellipse)

2. find the edge point of the structure by bay length and by numbers

(edge point of the structure)

3. get the base curve, cantilever curves and back span curve

(base curve, cantilever curves and back span curve)

4. create the main structural nodes 

By using 'curve/plane intersection', the nodes of cantilever, back-span and backstay can be created. The end points of column can be also created.

(main structural nodes )

5. create the rafter mid points and rafter curves

The straight lines between cantilever nodes and back-span nodes are not what we want because the rafters should be curves. So I just extracted the mid points of straight lines and then move upwards to be real mid points of rafters. Now, using 'interpolate', we can create the rafter curves by three points.

6. create the purlin nodes and strut nodes

7. prepare all the structural lines.

After creating all the structural nodes, the structural lines can be created.

(structural lines)

Step2-assign the section properties for the structural lines

By using the nodes from Geometry Gym, the sections can be defined from the libraries of codes. The material can be defined too.

(assignment of section properties)

Step3-assign boundary conditions

Select all the nodes which are backstay and column end points, and then fixed 6 degrees of freedom.

(assignment of boundary conditions)

Step4-assign static load on the nodes of purlins.

By "ggSAPLoadNode", we can assgin static load on the nodes.

Step5-query node displacement

(node's displacement)

Step6-optimization 

By "ggSAPSolver", we can connect SAP2000 engine and Grasshopper and do the analysis. The node's vertical displacement would be fitness. Genome would be parameters mentioned before. 

Here, the full analysis process cannot be provided because of some technique problems that I cannot install Rhino in the department-owned laptop which has the access of SAP2000. However, if it can work, I think everything would be good.

(analysis of optimization)

Project2-Part2 YouTube Movie link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bbk3rrIr7I&t=6s