Design of pre-stressed plate-strips to cover non-developable shells (Q2671681)

It is known that, as isometric transformations conserve the Gaussian curvature, three-dimensional non-developable shells cannot be obtained by help of the relaxation of pre-stressed plates using isometric transformations only. This problem was solved earlier only for small areas of a shell. Here it is shown that under suitable assumptions that relate the width of the shell-strip to the curvature of the shell, it is possible to design arbitrary shell surfaces by covering them with a set of shell-strips. The examples of optimized covers of the sphere by surface-strips which were generated from plate-strips with homogeneous and isotropic pre-stress are provided. The designs of the torus, of the helicoid and of the non-developable Möbius band, which require inhomogeneous and anisotropic pre-stress, are proposed.