Flexible formwork for concrete shells

Abstract

Abstract One of the complications with shell construction in any material today is the complexity of the building process, especially to construct and build the formwork and/or guide work. This often leads to unsatisfactory building time followed by increased cost. In a quest to rationalize this process, a concept based on flexible formwork has been explored for construction of freeform concrete structures. A computational framework has been developed, with functions for form finding and analysis of cables, membranes and shells. The theoretical predictions has been evaluated in a case study, with the construction of a full scale concrete pavilion. The predictions were found to be reliable and accurate with a mean deviation in formwork geometry of just 0.5 %. There were also indications that the cost of formwork for concrete shells can be reduced with as much as 32% - 66% through the use of a flexible formwork concept, compared to a traditional timber formwork.