Sunday, September 26, 2010

[kvbaszyu] Large domes

To measure the size of a "dome", determine the radius of the largest circle that can be inscribed within it without columns or other supports. Equivalently, the point which has the largest distance to its nearest support.  This represents the engineering difficulty of the dome, for it's hard to keep something off the ground far from a point of support.  What are the largest domes by this measure (which may not even be different from the official measure)?

How about maximizing the volume of the inscribed cylinder instead of circle?  The cylinder must be void of any structural (supporting) members, but may contrain non-structural matter, like risers and stadium seating.  (Is air structural? Maybe.) This rewards tall domes.

Looking at bridges, domes of a kilometer or two in diameter seem feasible, though the price goes up probably greater than quadratically.

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