Advantages of a CAD-integrated approach for the design cycle of structural membranes

Structural membranes are designed and analysed in a highly non-linear and interactive design cycle consisting of the following three steps: formfinding, structural analysis and cutting pattern generation. In order to successfully design a structure that meets both aesthetic and structural requirements, all three steps must be completed in accordance with each other. With the CAD-integrated approach for the design cycle, all three steps can be performed on one model and in one (CAD) software environment. Regarding the interactive nature of the design steps, this holds considerable advantages for the designer’s workflow. A NURBS description is used for both the geometry and the mechanical approximation and thus leads to highly accurate analysis models and results. There is no loss of information because of a classical meshing procedure. Isogeometric B-Rep Analysis extends the original idea of Isogeometric Analysis – to use NURBS based CAD models for analysis - by processing the topology for the analysis model. The advantages resulting from this approach will be presented in this paper.