Volumetric Michell Trusses for Parametric Design & Fabrication
Publication
ACM Symposium on Computational Fabrication 2019
Authors
Rahul Arora, Alec Jacobson, Timothy R. Langlois, Yijiang Huang, Caitlin Mueller, Wojciech Matusik, Ariel Shamir, Karan Singh, David I.W. Levin
Abstract
We present the first algorithm for designing volumetric Michell Trusses. Our method uses a parametrization-based approach to generate trusses made of structural elements aligned with the primary direction of an object’s stress field. Such trusses exhibit high strength-to-weight ratio while also being parametrically editable which can be easily integrated with parametric editing tools such as Autodesk Fusion. We show a number of examples that demonstrate that the output of our algorithm produces truss structures that are aligned with an object’s underlying stress tensor field, are structurally sound and that their global parametrization facilitates the creation of unique structures in a number of domains.
Paper
volumetric_michell_truss_scf19_arora_et_al.pdf