Kerf Bending Strategy for Thick Planar Sheet Materials

The manufacturing of double curved surfaces in architecture is a time consuming and laborious process. There are many ways to fabricate double curved surfaces, however, most of these approaches require special molds, which is expensive for individual production. To create freeform surfaces from planar sheet materials, several design-to-fabrication strategies based on bending and forming processes have been developed in the past few years. Such strategies are based on certain mechanical or geometrical properties of the material, such as elasticity or thickness. In this research we focus on investigating design for the purpose of manufacturing double curved architectural panels, based on geometry and material processing. We propose a cost-efficient design-to-fabrication approach based on kerf bending, a manufacturing strategy which bends materials using a series of cuts called ‘kerfs’, to form planar sheet materials, often used in standard construction. Planar sheet materials, such as wood based or gypsum boards which can be applied in such a fabrication strategy, are widely used for interior wall finishing. For testing and evaluating this approach a full scale double curved panel is fabricated.