Developing a mold-free approach for complex glulam production with the assist of computer vision technologies

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2021.103710Get rights and content

Highlights

  • A mold-free approach for double curved glulam production is proposed

  • A mechanical equipment is designed to spatially shape the double curved glulam

  • Computer vision is employed to inform the fabrication process with design model

  • Digital integration system is developed to comprehensively simulate the production

  • The feasibility is verified through fabrication experiments

Abstract

With the increasing use of glulam in construction industry, low efficiency of material and time in complex glulam production process has been widely recognized. While single curved glulam components are normally achieved with the aid of heavy molds, double curved ones are difficult to be produced directly without massive subtractive fabrication. In this context, a mold-free approach for complex glulam production is proposed, which consists of a mechanical system that spatially shapes the curved beam, and a vision system to inform the fabrication directly with design model. Through the integration of digital design, simulation and physical process, different types of curved glulam could be produced following the same workflow. This approach could eliminate the use of complex molds in curved glulam production, greatly reduce wastes in post-processing process. With the feasibility initially verified through fabrication experiments, the system will be further developed so as to be transferred to industrial practice.

Introduction

Wood has been regarded as one of the most promising building materials for the future due to its many excellent features such as sustainability, lightweight and high strength [1]. Recent years has witnessed the increasing use of wood in a variety of building types, especially large-span and multi-tall buildings. One of the most important wood products in construction industry is Glue-Laminated Timber, or glulam, which is made from layers of dimension lumbers bonded together with durable structural adhesives. With timber grain running parallel to the length direction, glulam is allowed to be produced as large scale components with almost no limit in length, depth and width. Glulam has been widely used in a variety of structural applications due to its high strength-to-weight ratio and large dimensions [2]. However, along with the expansion of the application scope, complexity in timber structures are gradually becoming more prominent, posing great challenges for production and processing of complex glulam with high accuracy and efficiency.

Complex glulam structures such as Centre-Pompidou Metz [3], French Expo-Pavilion Milan [4] and La Seine Musicale [5] could only be realized with the technical support of advancing consulting firms and contractors, not only in the design and optimization process, but also in the fabrication process of complex structures, components and connectors. In such buildings, single curved glulam components are normally achieved with the aid of heavy molds, while double curved ones are mostly milled with Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM) machines like wood machining centers. However, great cost of time, materials and money in both mold making and glulam milling process is hard to ignore, since double curved components need to be milled from linear or single curve components. At the same time, the damage of the wood grain during the milling process also severely reduces the load-bearing performance of the wood. The necessity has been widely recognized to explore new approaches for producing complex glulam [6].

The main challenge here is how to produce complex glulam directly so as to reduce the immense material waste and time consumption in mold making and subsequent subtraction process. A straightforward mode of glulam production could not only conducive to simplifying the production process, but also significantly improve the material efficiency in glulam construction. Response to this challenge is of particular importance for sustainable use of wood resources in such environmental challenges that construction industry is facing.

Rapidly developing digital technologies are constantly re-shaping the way that buildings are conceived and produced. In this research, a mold-free approach for complex glulam production is developed with the aid of computer vision technologies. In order to avoid the use of molds, a mechanical equipment is designed to spatially shape the double curved glulam, with computer vision system employed to inform the fabrication process with digital design directly.

This paper is structured as follow: The second section summarizes the current research status of complex glulam production technologies and digital fabrication related computer vision technologies; The third section describes the aim and methods of this research; The fourth section introduces the proposed mold-free production technology from three aspects: equipment, vision system and digital integrated system; The fifth section presents the production process and experiments conducted with different vision systems; The meaning and importance of this approach are analyzed, and future steps are proposed in conclusion.

Section snippets

Background

The curvature of Glulam components could be divided into four categories, say Straight, Single curved, Double curved with no torsion and Double curved with torsion, with increasing degree of complexity [7](Fig. 1). For the production of ordinary straight glulam components, a mature production process in factory has long been formed from strength grading, finger jointing, gluing, laminating to finishing [8]. There are already specialized equipment for each process, forming an efficient

Methods

The technical challenges faced by the current double curved glulam production technology are mainly two aspects: how to accurately locate the virtual design in physical space, how to spatially bend, twist, and finally stabilize the laminas in place during the fabrication process. In response to the current challenges, this research is dedicated to developing a mold-free approach for double curved glulam production, addressing existing issues from three aspects:

  • a mechanical system is designed as

Mold-free glulam production equipment

The way to produce curved timber could be analogous to that of a draftsman to create a Spline curves with a wood strip. A series of nodes, which could prevent translational movements while allow rotation, act as boundary conditions to hold the strip, resulting in a natural curve with minimal strain energy [10]. In this sense, the logic of single curve glulam production could be understood as shaping the laminas by controlling the location and angle of each press point on a plane. To extend this

Experiments of curved glulam production

A series of double curved glulam production experiments were carried out to verify the feasibility of the system proposed in this study. A scaled prototype of the mold-free equipment was developed for the experiments. The external dimension of the equipment is 1320*740*1160 mm, maximum clamping size of fixture is 160*160 mm, and moving range of the two-axis system is 400*350 mm. As mentioned before, Kinect V2 and HoloLens, as a representative of depth cameras and AR respectively, were used as

Conclusion

This paper presents a mold free approach for curved glulam production with the aid of computer vision technologies. Compared with the current approaches that rely on molds and subtractive processing, the approach proposed in this paper is more straightforward, which provides a universal mold system that adapts to different geometries and tasks. The intuitive benefit is that the consumption of materials, time and labor in complex mold making and material subtractive fabrication process could be

Declaration of Competing Interest

None.

Acknowledgment

The work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2018YFB1306903), and Science  and  Technology  Commission  of  Shanghai  Municipality (Grant No. 16dz2250500, Grant No.17dz1203405).

We'd like to thank Gang Liu from Shanghai Fab-Union Technology Co., Ltd. for his support on the platform development. We would also like to thank Chunpong So from Tongji University for his assistance on the experiments.

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