Cost optimization of MDOF adaptive solar skins: design issues

The development of adaptive building envelopes is receiving increasing interest in contemporary architecture to cope with several requirements, such as energy saving and harvesting or mitigating environmental actions, improving performance and, finally aesthetics. Actual implementation is basically concerning external “skins” (adaptive façades), but internal “skins” (adaptive ceilings) may be developed as well. The engineering aspects related to the above developments are quite complex and involve different behavioral models to be merged within the adaptive strategy. In previous researches, the Authors have presented a control strategy, called Finite-State Control (FSC), that has been applied to the study of an adaptive façade composed by an origami-like surface, able to assume different configurations in order to affect the vortex shedding phenomenon, potentially reducing the wind forces exerting on a high-rise building. In the proposed paper, a different study is presented concerning the conception of an adaptive origami-like solar skin. Assuming a conventional structure for the skin, the adaptivity scheme has the main purpose of optimizing the production of energy from the solar cells for different exposures. Together with this main objective of adaptation, other two criteria are considered, concerning the reduction of the total actuation energy: 1) the lightness of the envelope and 2) the optimal location of fixed links to the supporting structure and of the actuators. In the framework of a FSC strategy, the paper illustrates the envisaged solutions to the identified design issues.