JOURNAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR SHELL AND SPATIAL STRUCTURES: IAS DEPLOYABLE COVER ONA SWIMMING POOL IN SEVILLE FELIX ESCRIG Professor of the School of Architecture of Seville JUAN PEREZ VALCARCEL Professor of the School of Architecture of La Corufia JOSE SANCHEZ Assistant Professor of the School of Architecture of Seville SUMMARY Deployable grids have generated a lot of literature and theoretical proposals but tll the moment only @ few realizations. This is the reason for which Is important the process that has concluded by erecting a building deployed from two parcels of 33 c.m. including structure, fabric cover and ‘complementary elements till @ total volume enclosed of 17.000 c.m. in the time that takes to ‘hang these two parcels from a crane, deploy them by gravity load an anchor the lower points to the foundations and supports. We describe the basis of design as well as details of construction, process of building and final appearance of the whole. 4. INTRODUCTION builded with scissors of three arms or “trissors". Scissors of three or four bars have the inconvenience of the great size of the Thirty years have passed since the first and Joints if we want a wide range of opening. last deployable root bassed on scissor grids was constructed by the spanish architect Emilio Pérez Pifiero. This was a cover for a 8.000 s.q.m. mobile exhibition pavilion with a total weight of 40 Ton. and assembled by 74 modules of 12x s.q.m. made with aluminium in structures of scissors of four arms (Fig. 1). For trissors the relationship between the diameter of bars, joints and angle of twisting “a” can be obtained from Fig. 4 [1] Now, continuing the tradition opened by E.P.P. we have built a cover on a swimming pool for the Sports City Council of Seville in San Pablo Sports Centre. The mobile pavilion of E.P.P. was flat but he experimented before with models for spherical grids and proposed very clever ideas in his first invention for a mobile theatre (Fig. 2). To avoid problems of unstabilty and weight, in a late design, he built it by parts and added a td=D @=18,53° new level of bars to stiffen the basic grid. This additional level was included in the initial For tetrascissors (Fig. 5) we obtain (2] and for parcel (Fig. 3). These two designs were d=D a=24,47° a 20VoL. 87 (1090) 9420 Hh Fig.1.- Deployable Exhibition Pavilion by Emilio Pérez Pifero (1964). 40JOURNAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR SHELL AND SPATIAL STRUCTURES: ASSVou. 87 (1886). 120 Fig.3.- Stiffened deployable dome by Emilio Pérez Piftero (1970). 43JOURNAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR SHELL AND SPATIAL STRUCTURES: IASS | Fig.4.- Geometry of the central joint for a three arms scissor.VOL. 37 (1996) n.120, SYED DWI EFVIT OTT” Fig.6.- Emilio Pérez Pifiero Patent for a plane deployable grid with bend bars.JOURNAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR SHELL AND SPATIAL STRUCTURES: IASS Fig.7.- Set of four scissors of diferent lengths. dying Dod f+ 4sina Ped yo Bina 2g 1 sing-2*4 yo sine d 2 The size of nodes cause important eccentricities that leads to structural problems like bending moments due to geometry and not to external loads. E.P.P. solved these —_ eccentricities constructively by means of curved bars, but this did not avoid stresses due to imposed deflections (Fig. 6). We have found a better solution by using plane scissors (Fig. 7), that can be connected by hinges and do no need special pieces. These scissors correctly connected between them and satisfying some topological conditions [3] guaranty the foldirg process in ‘a more compact parcel than with trissors of tetrascissors (Fig. 8) {3] 2. GEOMETRY OF A SPHERICAL SEGMENT. ‘One of the advantages of this spatial scissor grids is that if we impose certain simplificative conditions they can be solved with a minimum of different elements. In our case we establish two restrictions, a) All bars have the same length and the central joint is eccenttically placed. b) The mesh is formed by two families crossing in such a way that only four struts are connected at each joint This means that each family deploys as an arch as indicated in Fig. 9 although not necessarily on a plane. ‘The result is a model as described in Fig. 10. The angle of twisting of each scissor 25 in the Fig. 11 can be fixed at will. I we decide to choice 8 = B the axes of each two bars will be aligned (Fig. 12). This improve the structural behaviour. ‘The geometry is thus defined when we fix the part selected of a spherical segment, the number of divisions ‘n* and the angle of scissors in the deployed step 25 (Fig. 13). In our case 25 = a. Another advantage of this kind of grids is that although scissors of a family do not are on a single plane the upper of lower joints do. This, allows us to connect several spherical segments between them as we can show in Fig. 14. Then we can assemble several structures to form modulated covers by means of little parcels. The structural stability of this kind of grids is conditioned by the number of supports at the edge and the number of diagonal stiffeners (Fig.15). 45VOL. 37 (1996) n. 120s EI Fig.9.- Curved deployement of a set of excentrical scissors. 46Fig.10.- Deployement of a flat structure built entrical scissors. Fig.11.- Curved deployement of a set of excéVOL. $7 (1996) )n. 120 Fig.12.- Arch deployed till the alignment of bars. This kind of structures are not conventional space frames that only produce axil stresses. They introduce bending moments and then they have flexional capacity enough to avoid some perimetral supports. But this leads to very mobile structures and it is better to satisly the cenditions of a single layer space frame. The next problem is also of morphological character. The fabric roof has a geometry that corresponds to the deployed grid. But from the folded to extended states they are different positions that need patterns longer than in the final position. This must be studied carefully because if not the structure blocks in a intermediate stage. Fig.13.- Simplified interpretation of a deployable 48 arch. |Fig.14.-Three spherical segments connected between them.VOL. 87 (1996) 120 Fig.15.- Stiffeners necessary to guarantee the stability of a spherical segment. The fabric can be connected on the upper joints or hanged from the bottom ones an even it two both if we use a double layer (Fig.16). ‘The geometrical problems are different in each case and the fabric causes problems of incompatibility through intermediate steps that requires to bend some bars to continue the deployement process till the final extending in which geometry is newly compatible. This phenomenon helps us to stabilize the structure when stand up although introduces difficulties to deploy the whole. It is convenient to use materials with a low Modulus of Elasticity like aluminium, wood, bamboo or synthetic fibers Another problem with the cover is that it hangs disordered when structure folds (Fig.17). Fortunately we have solution for this. If we connect the upper and lower layer in points of diagonals like shown in Fig.18 when the grid folds the fabric folds also ordered inside. If we have only a layer we can dispose a diagonal band or cablo in the other layer to achieve the same effect like we show in Fig.19 on a real model in four successive stages. Fig. 16,- Fabric root in two layers on a deployable grid. 50.JOURNAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR SHELL ANO SPATIAL STRUCTURES IASS Fig.17.- Free hanging of the fabric when the structure folds. Fig.18,- Forced hanging of the fabric when the structure folds. 313. FULL SPACE DESIGN TO COVER A SWIMMING POOL ‘The problem was to cover, and heat during the cold season, an olympic swimming pool 50x22 s.qm. in such a way that it could be assembled in only a few days including root, walls, docrs, pipes for heat and dry the air, lights, ete Fig.19.- Model of a selffolding roof hanging fabric. During the hot season all this equipmant would be dismantled without any piece remaining or even trace of the winter construction (Fig. 20). In this case we adopted the geometry described of a spherical segment of 6x6 quadrilateral with all the bars equal, connecting two of them in a common plane,