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New hybrids – from textile logics towards tailored material behaviour

Article  in  Architectural Engineering and Design Management · April 2020

DOI: 10.1080/17452007.2020.1744421

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New hybrids – from textile logics towards tailored material behaviour
Julian Lienhard and Philipp Eversmann
Department of Architecture, University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany

ABSTRACT

Today’s challenges in Architecture and Engineering arise from ever more complex networks of boundary
conditions, which often address contradicting environmental, social and economic aspects. Within this
context, finding a single best solution for a construction type or planning method to solve these
challenges, is often not possible. In pursuit of efficient solutions for both digital modelling and actual
construction, we are discovering new hybrids as forerunners of our creative profession. In this context,
we are also discovering new fields of application for textile architecture for both products and planning
techniques beyond their classic application for membrane structures. The current paper on ‘new
hybrids’ will address this potential and show new fields of application, where knowledge from textile
architecture is the starting point for developing new design and construction methods, using traditional
building materials. The current paper reviews some recent developments of design and construction
principals in textile architecture and gives an outlook, towards how these can be transferred, onto the
development of a new filament-based timber material.

1. Introduction
A significant amount of research and industrial developments have aimed to overcome the anisotropic
behaviour of textiles by developing building products with uniform orthotropic behaviour, for example,
through pre-stressed weaving processes in membranes or triaxial textiles in FRP (see Figure 1(B)). More
recent research and industrial developments are shifting their focus towards the potentials of tailored
material behaviour by means of cnc controlled weaving, knitting and bespoke fibre placement (see
Figure 1(C)). The following examples highlight some current research and practice where mechanical
properties are geared towards project-specific behaviour is textile architecture.
Figure 1(A) shows the membrane structure for a retractable roof, which follows a consequent textile
logic with polyester belts (sewn into the fabric) as edge and ridge reinforcement. In this pre-stressed
system, the challenge lies in fabrication where the different and non-linear stiffness behaviours of PTFE
membrane and PES belts have to be aligned in their compensation ratios. In order to guarantee the
target pre-stress of both membrane and belts in the final installation state, multiple belt and seam types
are tested to find the best match in stiffness behaviour. Figure 1(B) shows a hinge less shading
mechanism, which explores the potentials of tailored material behaviour in fibre composites. Here, the
high strength to low stiffness ratio in GFRP is the starting point to designing a shading mechanism, which
changes its shape through elastic

CONTACT Julian Lienhard lienhard@uni-kassel.de University of Kassel, 34125 Kassel, Germany

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Figure 1. (A) Retractable membrane roof Buchs CH (Lienhard & Kugel, 2015). (B): Flectofin (Lienhard et al., 2011). (C): Textile
Hybrid at CCA 333 workshop 2014 with Ahlquist, Lienhard and Soto).

material deformation. Stiffness gradients, in the layup and local fibre reinforcement, control the shape
and minimise stress concentrations. In Figure 1(C) elastically bent GFRP rods and a CNC-knitted textile
are combined into the complex equilibrium state of a textile hybrid. The change in fibre density and
knit type within the textile generates an integrated cable net with varying cell dimensions and edge
reinforcements.

2. Design principles
2.1. Principles of lightweight design
Traditionally, lightweight design is divided into three main categories of material, structure and system
(Sobek, 1995). Lightweight design in material and structure, relies on specific expertise which lies in the
competence of civil engineering. Lightweight systems explore the potential of reducing material use, by
means of functional integration, for example, by combining a building’s envelope, structure and heat
emission into a single layer of a low-E coated textile membrane roof. As such the development of
lightweight systems inherently relies on interdisciplinary collaboration.

2.2. Functional integration and grading

Functionally graded materials were first developed in the 1990s as thermal barrier materials for space
shuttles, where a functional combination of materials was investigated to withstand extreme climate
conditions (Miyamoto, Kaysser, Rabin, Kawasaki, & Ford, 1999).
Functionally graded building components are characterised through an inhomogeneous distribution
of material over their volume or also inhomogeneous properties of the material itself. Additionally, the
possibility of integrating two (or more) individual materials with different properties, which can be
composed specifically for engineering and architectural purposes bear great potential (Udupa, Rao, &
Gangadharan, 2014).
Such multi-material design concepts are particularly effective in textile composites, since the
mechanical properties can be designed towards specific behaviours in an efficient production process.
This strategy was investigated in the German Collaborative Research Centre, for the design of function-
integrating thermoplastic textile composites (Modler et al., 2016).
In textile cladding systems and building envelopes, a functionally graded approach can enable
integrating various characteristics in relation to: thermal insulation, vapour issues, changing weather
conditions as well as acoustics (Schmid, Haase, & Sobek, 2015).
2.3. Hybrids
In structural design, the intentional combination of load transfer mechanisms are referred to as hybrid
structures. Such hybrid systems result from linking two parental systems of dissimilar internal load
transfer into a coupled system. If the parental systems are equipotent, in terms of their structural
capacity, their coupling to a hybrid system may be in favour of the two, when reciprocal stress
compensation and/or additional rigidity through opposite system deflection, are actively enabled. This
principal can be transferred to other functional systems and even planning methods. As such, the recent
developments in lightweight design towards functional integration and gradient materials lead to the
development of new hybrid structure systems, which develop from material and fabrication potentials
towards components and hybrid building structures (rather than from structural behaviour to material
requirements) (Lienhard and Knippers, 2015).

3. Functional grading in textile timber systems

Digitally controlled fabrication of textile systems can allow a large variety of pattern variation within one
surface or volume, which raises the question whether, for maximum design control and efficiency, these
textile systems should be designed at the scale of the yarn or filament itself. One technique for the design
of material efficient structures is topology optimisation (TO). The fabrication of topology optimised
structures often remains challenging, since usually complex geometry results are derived from the
optimisation process. Ongoing research investigates fabrication oriented TO, where constraints in
fabrication are directly integrated into the simulation process and only result in structures which can
also be fabricated. The authors specifically investigate this technique in relation to the functional grading
of novel textile timber systems. In this process, new fabrication technology and material was developed:
a solid wood filament. The wood filament is made from split willow withes (a local fast-growing plant in
Germany), which are homogenised in their cross section and joined to an endless filament (see Figure
2).
For this research an existing topology optimisation model by Andreassen et al., 2011 was adapted to
the specific constraints of working with filament placement. Instead of volume elements, one-
dimensional truss elements that directly represent the continuous wood filaments was used. This
approach shows similarities with the ground-structure approach (Bendsøe, BenTal, & Zowe, 1994) with
the difference that not all possible member layouts between the fixed set of nodes were modelled.
Instead, modelling was limited to relevant orientations of the finite elements that represent the
orientation of the continuous wood filament. In addition, a sensitivity filtering technique was adapted
to control the minimum length of the continuous wood filament. The results are presented in Figure 3.

Figure 2. Material fabrication of solid willow filament. Left: Raw willow rods. Middle: Raw and homogenised willow withe.
Right: Joined, endless solid willow filament (images: Experimental and Digital Design and Construction, University of Kassel).
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Figure 3. The results obtained from the topology optimisation model for a beam with two supports and a central load and
with four different element orientation angles. Left: the results are shown with intermediate densities. Right: the results
are shown where the post-processing filter is applied. The filtering lengths were set to respectively 2, 16, 32 and 64 (images:
Experimental and Digital Design and Construction, Deetman, University of Kassel).

While topology optimisation is often solely used to decrease the use of material, the presented
material developments use topology optimisation for fibre orientation. The material for the wood
filament is the widely available willow and therefore comparatively cheap. The aim was to reduce the
fabrication time and energy by using less material. This modelling method also enables design at the
resolution of the additive manufacturing method itself, which is a very high resolution compared to how
normal building components are designed. This high-resolution is possible with topology optimisation
(Wu et al., 2018) (Challis, Roberts, & Grotowski, 2014) and it helps to design structures, where the
natural fibers of the continuous wood filament are used very efficiently. A range of printing samples
were effectuated as well as tests for solid, spaced and topology optimised lay-ups (see Figure 4). As a
binder between layers, a contact adhesive was used. This enables to pre-impregnate the filament with
adhesive and use the pressure applied by the robot for adhesive activation, resulting in an extremely
fast additive manufacturing process compared to traditional 3d-printing like Fused Deposition Modelling
(Dawod et al., 2019).
Current investigations explore additive manufacturing techniques, using the principals of braiding, for
three-dimensional components such as winding of hollow profiles (see Figure 5).

Figure 4. Results of printing tests of a solid lay-up with no distances between filaments and printing of the result of a
topology optimisation (images: Experimental and Digital Design and Construction, University Kassel).
Figure 5. Results of printing tests of a three-dimensional winding component (images: Experimental and Digital Design and
Construction, University Kassel).

4. Conclusion and future potentials

Modern design, manufacturing and construction principals in textile architecture have been developed
based on a profound understanding of the particular anisotropic material behaviour. This paper shows
how this behaviour is increasingly used to develop materials with bespoke mechanical properties to
optimise structural performance and enable functional grading. Similar to these examples from textile
architecture shown in Figure 1 the additive placement of wooden filaments now opens up previously
unknown possibilities in tailoring material behaviour for new hybrid timber structures.

References
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using 88 lines of code. Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization, 43(1), 1–16.
Bendsøe, M. P., Ben-Tal, A., & Zowe, J. (1994). Optimization methods for truss geometry and topology design. Structural
Optimization, 7(3), 141–159.
Challis, V. J., Roberts, A. P., & Grotowski, J. F. (2014). High resolution topology optimization using graphics processing units
(GPUs). Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization, 49(2), 315–325.
Dawod, M., Deetman, A., Akbar, Z., Heise, J., Böhm, S., Klussmann, H., & Eversmann, P. (2019, September). Continuous
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