Wednesday 14th of March 2007, 20:55
Tights that were pants
The model might look like tights but it is in fact pants: it would not work. The stiffness of lightweight fabric membrane structures depends on its curvature, pretension, and stiffness of the boundary and support conditions. How ever much Mark and I played with the ladies under garment we just could not get curvature across the main span. In strong winds the flat part would be prone to vibrate and unduly load the structure dynamically.
A rethink and numerous concessions made to our visionary initial design and we have settled on this as the bases for our computational model.
wow, that model looks pretty awesome!
Very, VERY cool model!
I wonder what other materials you could use instead of the tights… i suppose you used very ‘large’ woman’s size ones?
when i say ‘tights,’ i meant ‘pants’. Anyway…
Yeah, the tights were extra large. It was my first time buying a pair and that could have been an engtect entry by itself.
Thanks guys - I hope Mike likes the model too.
would that I had been a fly on the wall during the Large Underwear Purchase….
It does look very impressive and I can’t see any ladders either! I was also rather wowwed by the amphitheatre model beneath the pants/tights when I saw it last weekend. Good work, you two and I hope you do as well as you deserve.