UC Berkeley

Concrete is the most widely used material in the world and architecture would be hard to imagine without it. It is valued for its durability, strength, and minimal maintenance and it handles almost every climate. However, the production of concrete and its excessive use for a wide variety of applications in the construction sector is also responsible for 8% of global CO2 emissions. This number is alarming and calls for an urgent rethink towards a more economical, intelligent, and environmentally conscious use of concrete. However, architectural history, and in particular the development of concrete shells, has shown that it is possible to build efficiently and achieve large spans even with minimal material. While this approach offers tremendous potential for more sustainable construction in the future, shell structures also present some challenges. They typically require excessive scaffolding and labor, resulting in high building costs and significant waste of scaffolding materials, limiting their successful implementation in the construction industry. A renaissance of concrete shells and thus a possible solution for more sustainable construction depends on whether these challenges can be overcome.

Motivated by these pressing questions, this dissertation focuses on the development and analysis of a novel method for the design and fabrication of concrete shells using a stay-in-place bending-active formwork. As part of this dissertation, a feasibility study is conducted to validate the constructability of shells and gridshells using this method. Furthermore, by conducting physical tests, this study shows how the use of CFRP as stay-in-place formwork affects the structural performance of the built shells. Another contribution of this work is a digital study on the influence of the geometrical parameters of such hybrid gridshells produced using bending-active formwork on their structural performance, both from a local and a global point of view. The findings presented in this dissertation provide valuable insights that can be incorporated into the design and early decision-making process of hybrid gridshells. By addressing the challenges associated with the sustainability and design of concrete shells, and by introducing the novel approach of using bending-active CFRP formwork for the design of concrete gridshells, this research contributes to promoting and facilitating the adoption of these material-efficient structures in the construction industry.