A Novel Design Method of Deployable Semi-Regular Tessellated Surfaces with Plano-Spherical Units

The design of movable systems gives an opportunity to create transformable designs which respond to the environmental, functional, cultural, and aesthetical needs of today’s architecture. This paper proposes a method for designing a family of deployable structures which can be applied to semi-regular tessellated planar surfaces such as roofs, walls, and shading devices. The generated modular approach and adaptability provides a wide usage area and various combinations for these designs. The regular convex polygon modules are designed as a network of the triangular units. The triangular unit is designed using Bennett’s overconstrained plano-spherical linkage topology. The polygonal modules are assembled to each other in one-uniform semi-regular tessellations. The assembly of adjacent regular convex polygons in each tessellation is examined to find a proper solution for no collision during deployment and to properly fit a surface without any gaps or overlaps in the deployed position. The assembly method for creating 1-DoF deployable surfaces and mobility calculations for a unit, the polygonal modules, and the assemblies are computed, and motion studies are demonstrated with CAD models and exemplified for a square module for motion tests in a prototype.