Jef Rombouts, an architectural engineer, is visiting for a three-month research stay at the Block Research Group. During his research stay at the Block Research Group, he will develop a framework for the design of strained gridshells as an elastic formwork for concrete shells.
Jef obtained the degree of “Master of Engineering: Architecture” at KU Leuven in 2015. The same year, he started on a joint-PhD project at KU Leuven and Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
For his master thesis, Jef investigated the Thrust Network Analysis method, and applied it for the design of a liturgical space. In the context of his PhD, he is currently working on form-finding, analysis and optimization techniques for strained gridshells. During the first 2 years of his PhD, he developed a novel form-finding and analysis method for bending-active structures, which was presented at the IASS conference in 2017 and published in the International Journal on Numerical methods in Engineering.
