V-form Vaulted Ceilings

Floor slabs constitute a significant part of a building’s mass and have a large impact on its carbon footprint. Vaulted ceilings promise improvements and have shifted into the focus of recent work. This work develops a new kind of ceiling geometry (V-form) which utilizes corrugated ribs and is unreinforced. The V-Form ceiling is developed through an iterative process, led by FE-calculations and parameter studies, which suggest a reduction of material and energy use of up to a factor of 4 compared to conventional reinforced concrete slabs. For the V-form ceiling, a geometrically flexible and reusable formwork system is proposed. The corrugated ribs are created by stretching tension bands over an inflated membrane. The production process is outlined and the potential applications of the V-form slab are shown.