The secret of Candelas umbrellas

Weve always being told that the secret of Candelas umbrellas was the shape. It is right, of course, but there
is something else. The design of every shell is based on the triad external actions shape boundary
conditions. I would say that in the current case studied boundary conditions play a significant and elegant
role.

Felix Candela designed the 4cm thick umbrellas under the assumption of a thin shell working in pure
membrane action. To achieve that, he used the properties of the parabola, which is able to transform a
uniform load into pure axial forces.

The simplification of the main load being vertical, uniformly distributed and projected, was estimated by
Candela to be a 5% deviation respect to the real results.

The umbrellas are made out of 4

hypars (hyperbolic paraboloids).
Each hypar is an anticlastic
surface formed from two
principal parabolas of different
sign.

The equation of the hyperbolic

paraboloid is:

=  


where  = 

In words of C. Faber [1]:: due to the double curvature of the surface, the method of analysis could be limited
to an investigation of the membrane state of stresses, provided that the resultant stresses remained low.

If we look at a differential element, the two principal stresses of tension and compression follow the main
parabolas. Candela chose an element rotated so that is easier to integrate along the two principal ruled
directions (because here we have another property of the hypar: it is a ruled surface*).
surface Therefore, looking at
Mohrs circle, axial forces can be understood as pure shear where  =  = 0

Puchers equation, based on the vertical projection of forces, can be used to obtain the shear stresses in the
surface (Timoshenko) [2, 3]. If a shell is shallow, the derivatives of the surface are approximately equal to the
curvatures and twist of the differential element.











2
=


 
 


Where q is the load per unitary area and:

= 

= 

=
 = 0

=

Hence:
 =


2

For an umbrella like those from Rios warehouse:

=


1.5
=
= 0.05 !"#
 3.7 7.6

Thickness of the shell = 4cm

Total load (slab, live load, waterproofing) = 2 KPa
It leads to ridiculous stresses in the shell:
 =


/& ' (.()*

2
2 $/!
=
= 20$/! +,,,,,,- 500 $. = 0.5
5/.
"#
2 2 0.05 !

These stresses need to be taken by compression of the concrete in the principal direction 1 and by tension of
the steel in the principal direction 2. The available steel of those times was fyd = 120 MPa and the calculation
to standard the permissible stresses design.
He used bars 6 As1 = 28 mm2.
 20000 /!
/ 1 **

=
=
166 !!
/!
+,,,,,- 6 23 16/170
0 120 /!!
The reinforcement was increased to prevent cracking.

Now we reach the key issue I wanted to highlight in the introduction. Under this assumption (but not with
other types of loads) there are no stresses normal to the boundary generators which are directions of pure
shear. Nonequilibrated shears accumulate along the four sides of the warped quadrangle, resulting in
tangential tensile or compressive forces. These are the only reactions of the shell.

Tensile forces along the outer edges increase from zero at corner O to maximum at center point A or B.
6* =   = 20000/! 7.6! = 152 $
152000
= 1266 !! 520
120
Compressive forces along the inner edges increase from zero at points A or B to maximum at point C.
8* = 2   = 2 20 $/! 7.6! = 304 $

It required the slab thickness to be increased at the inner valley, up to 30cm in the connection to the column.

Professor J.M. Goicolea [4] made an interesting study to assess the behaviour of the shell, namely the
membrane behaviour, in order to compare the analytical results with those we can obtain nowadays with
numerical methods.

He proposed a scalar index which oscilates from 0 (pure bending) to 1 (pure membrane). It represents the
fraction off the density of total elastic energy corresponding to the normal stresses respect to normal +
flexural stresses. The next figure shows the major influence of the edge design for the shell performance.

(Left: Membrane index for free edge. Right: Membrane index for restrained edge)

* NOTES: Being a ruled surface brings another well-known

well known advantage: the formwork is easy to build. At least
much easier than for a sinclastic surface.

REFERENCES:
[1] Candela, the shell builder. (1993) C. Faber. Reinhold Publishing Corp.
[2] Theory of plates and shells, chapter 113. (1959) S. Timoshenko. Mc Graw-Hill.
[3] Structural optimization, vol. 2. (1985) A. Borkowski, S. Jendo. Published by M. Save & W. Prager.
[4] Finite element model analysis of works authored
au
by Flix Candela. (2010) J. Oliva, P. Antoln, A. Cmara, J.
M. Goicolea. Hormign y acero.