Formfinding through Plastic deformation.

Hello everyone!! 

I´m doing a simulation excerzice trying to do formfinding through plastic deformation. I have been using Karamba to simulate a deformed shell so I can find the principal curvature and simulate the bending process of a flat stell sheet in order to get the same shape. This can be really interesting so we can evaluate the material beheaviour, the deformation on the cross section a

nd explore big deformations in mecanics analysis of materials.

I am not a mecanical engineer nor a civil engineer, I´m an Architect and my interest is the construcction method and extracting the necesary information to consider fabricating the project.

I´m having conceptual challengings on the methodology for this simulation, so I will post a small overview of what I`ve done.

1.- Understanding the Geometry. 

This is a sclupture by the Venezuelan/Hungarian/German artist Zoltan Kunckel (KuZo).

The shape is achieved  bending a pre water cut square sheet of stainless steel. After bended manually, the different lashes are pulled on the opposite direction. New curvatures are produced after all is deployed.

2.- Reproducing the Shape digitally. 

Using Karamba I built a definition to reproduce the produced by physical stress. This model served to find deformations that occur when a set of loads are applied to a mesh. Following this process will allow us to find a coherent and more natural cross section so then we could re-shape simulating the bending process of a piece of ductile material.