Vibration health monitoring for tensegrity structures

Designing tensegrity structures

Tensegrity structures are nice-looking and statically strong architectural complexes composed of a set of disjoint struts tied together by cables and nothing more. These structures are known for their aesthetic and structural qualities, which are explored in architecture and art. Their perceived lightness is their distinct visual feature: the heavy elements (the struts) are well disjoint, yet t...

Symmetric Prismatic Tensegrity Structures

This paper presents a simple and efficient method to determine the self-equilibrated configurations of prismatic tensegrity structures with dihedral symmetry. It is demonstrated that stability of prismatic tensegrity structures is not only determined by the connectivity manner of the members, but also sensitive to the height/radius ratio and the stiffnss/prestress ratio. A catalogue of symmetri...

Optimization of tensegrity structures

This paper concerns the design of tensegrity structures with optimal mass-to-stiffness ratio. Starting from an initial layout that defines the largest set of allowed element connections, the procedure seeks the topology, geometry and prestress of the structure that yields optimal designs for different loading scenarios. The design constraints include strength constraints for all elements of the...

Zero Stiffness Tensegrity Structures

Tension members with a zero rest length allow the construction of tensegrity structures that are in equilibrium over a continuous range of positions and thus exhibit mechanism-like properties; equivalently, they have zero stiffness. The zero-stiffness modes are not internal mechanisms, as they involve first-order changes in member length, but are a direct result of the use of the special tensio...

Vibration Health Monitoring of Gears