Publications by Tian Chen | EPFL Graph Search

Leveraging the Snap Buckling of Bistable Magnetic Shells to Design a Refreshable Braille Dot

Pedro Miguel Nunes Pereira de Almeida Reis, Bastien Freddy Gustave Aymon, Arefeh Abbasi, Tian Chen

A design concept is proposed for the building block, a dot, of programmable braille readers utilizing bistable shell buckling, magnetic actuation, and pneumatic loading. The design process is guided by Finite Element simulations, which are initially valida ...

Wiley2023

BamX: Rethinking Deployability in Architecture through Weaving

Mark Pauly, Yingying Ren, Tian Chen, Seiichi Eduardo Suzuki Erazo, Stefana Parascho

Deployable gridshells are a class of planar-to-spatial structures that achievea 3D curved geometry by inducing bending on a flat grid of elastic beams. However, theslender nature of these beams often conflicts with the structure’s load-bearing capacity.To ...

De Gruyter2023

Indentation and stability of woven domes

Célestin Vallat, Pedro Miguel Nunes Pereira de Almeida Reis, Tomohiko Sano, Tian Chen, Samuel Jean Bernard Poincloux

Discrete domes are doubly curved structures comprising a network of beam-like elements. We study the mechanics of discrete domes made of ribbons woven in a pentagonal triaxial pattern. Experiments and finite element simulations are performed to characteriz ...

ELSEVIER2023

From kirigami to hydrogels: a tutorial on designing conformally transformable surfaces

Yue Wang, Yingying Ren, Tian Chen

Elastic surfaces that morph between multiple geometrical configurations are of significant engineering value, with applications ranging from the deployment of space-based PV arrays, the erection of temporary shelters, and the realization of flexible displa ...

2023

Umbrella Meshes: Elastic Mechanisms for Freeform Shape Deployment

Mark Pauly, Uday Kusupati, Yingying Ren, Florin Isvoranu, Tian Chen, Davide Pellis

We present a computational inverse design framework for a new class of volumetric deployable structures that have compact rest states and deploy into bending-active 3D target surfaces. Umbrella meshes consist of elastic beams, rigid plates, and hinge joint ...

2022

Smooth Triaxial Weaving with Naturally Curved Ribbons

Pedro Miguel Nunes Pereira de Almeida Reis, Tian Chen, Samuel Jean Bernard Poincloux

Triaxial weaving is a handicraft technique that has long been used to create curved structures using initially straight and flat ribbons. Weavers typically introduce discrete topological defects to produce nonzero Gaussian curvature, albeit with faceted su ...

AMER PHYSICAL SOC2021

Modulation of perovskite crystallization processes towards highly efficient and stable perovskite solar cells with MXene quantum dot-modified SnO2

Michael Graetzel, Shaik Mohammed Zakeeruddin, Ulf Anders Hagfeldt, Yuhang Liu, Tian Chen, Haizhou Lu, Jaeki Jeong

Nanocrystalline tin (iv) oxide (SnO2) electron-transport layers (ETL) have shown great potential for achieving highly efficient, stable perovskite solar cells (PSCs), in particular low-temperature-processed flexible PSCs. Recently, studies have further sho ...

2021

Computational Inverse Design of Surface-based Inflatables

Mark Pauly, Francis Julian Panetta, Florin Isvoranu, Tian Chen

We present a computational inverse design method for a new class of surface-based inflatable structure. Our deployable structures are fabricated by fusing together two layers of inextensible sheet material along carefully selected curves. The fusing curves ...

2021

A reprogrammable mechanical metamaterial with stable memory

Mark Pauly, Pedro Miguel Nunes Pereira de Almeida Reis, Tian Chen

Metamaterials are designed to realize exotic physical properties through the geometric arrangement of their underlying structural layout(1,2). Traditional mechanical metamaterials achieve functionalities such as a target Poisson's ratio(3) or shape transfo ...

2021

Bistable Auxetic Surface Structures

Mark Pauly, Francis Julian Panetta, Tian Chen, Max Schnaubelt

We present Bistable Auxetic Surface Structures, a novel deployable material system based on optimized bistable auxetic cells. Such a structure can be flat-fabricated from elastic sheet material, then deployed towards a desired double-curved target shape by ...

2021

Bending Response of a Book with Internal Friction

Pedro Miguel Nunes Pereira de Almeida Reis, Tian Chen, Samuel Jean Bernard Poincloux

We study the bending of a booklike system, comprising a stack of elastic plates coupled through friction. The behavior of this layered system is rich and nontrivial, with a nonadditive enhancement of the apparent stiffness and a significant hysteretic resp ...

2021

3D Weaving with Curved Ribbons

Mark Pauly, Francis Julian Panetta, Yingying Ren, Florin Isvoranu, Tian Chen, Samuel Jean Bernard Poincloux, Christopher Brandt

Basket weaving is a traditional craft for creating curved surfaces as an interwoven array of thin, flexible, and initially straight ribbons. The three-dimensional shape of a woven structure emerges through a complex interplay of the elastic bending behavio ...

2021

The Canopy Pavilion: A lightweight shading structure using a deployable auxetic linkage membrane

Etienne Bouleau, Dieter Dietz, Mark Pauly, Arthur François Blanc, Florin Isvoranu, Tian Chen

We present the Canopy Pavilion, a lightweight shading structure for a social gathering space. The shading surface is realized as a tensioned auxetic linkage membrane, composed of two double-curved anticlastic layers separated by a compression pole. The mem ...

2020

How to weave a perfect sphere with curved strips

Mark Pauly, Francis Julian Panetta, Pedro Miguel Nunes Pereira de Almeida Reis, Yingying Ren, Tian Chen, Samuel Jean Bernard Poincloux

Triaxial weaving, a craft technique that enables the generation of surfaces with tri-directional arrays of initially straight elastic strips, has long been loved by basket makers and artists seeking a combination of practical and aesthetically-pleasing str ...

American Physical Society2020

X-Shell Pavilion: A Deployable Elastic Rod Structure

Etienne Bouleau, Mark Pauly, Francis Julian Panetta, Florin Isvoranu, Tian Chen

We present the X-Shell pavilion, a lightweight structure composed of elastic beam elements joined in a special layout that allows easy on-site deployment. The structure’s undeployed assembly configuration lies mostly flat and is easy to build, consisting o ...

Ingenta2019