Cable Stay Façade Warpage Study
Thornton Tomasetti Practices: CORE studio, Building Skin
Project Team: Diller Scofidio + Renfro

In collaboration with the Building Skin group, an efficient structural design for the cable stay façade of the Culture Shed project was achieved through iterative analysis. Warped cable geometry was derived from cable forces, glass stresses, and glass warpage and iteratively optimized with a custom parametric tool.

The façade consists of a series of vertical cables with varying lateral connections and rigid boundaries. First, non-linear analysis of a Strand finite element model determined cable forces and deflections. Next, deflected cable geometry was exported as a .dxf for Rhino import. This gemoetry was then implemented in a Grasshopper definition to create original panels and deflected panels. The perpendicular displacement of panel diagonal midpoints was compared to panel diagonal length to calculate panel warpage percentage. Minimum to maximum panel warpage percentage was visualized with a green to red gradient.