Control of an Architectural Cable Net Geometry

Tensioned cable nets can be used as a lightweight supporting formwork in the construction of thin concrete architectural shells. Meeting the structural and mechanical specifications of such shells requires precise positioning of the nodes of the cable net. We develop and experimentally verify a control strategy that uses measurements of the nodal positions to identify model parameters and calculate adjustments to the boundary cable lengths to achieve the desired form. As cable net lengths adjustments on the construction site are time-consuming, the number of control adjustments is minimized via a sparsity-promoting optimization-based method.