A marching procedure for form-finding for tensegrity structures

Micheletti, Andrea; Williams, William

doi:10.2140/jomms.2007.2.857

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A marching procedure for form-finding for tensegrity structures

Andrea Micheletti and William O. Williams

Vol. 2 (2007), No. 5, 857–882

DOI: 10.2140/jomms.2007.2.857

Abstract

We give an algorithm for solving the form-finding problem, that is, for finding stable placements of a given tensegrity structure. The method starts with a known stable placement and alters edge lengths in a way that preserves the equilibrium equations. We then characterize the manifold to which classical tensegrity systems belong, which gives insight into the form-finding process. After describing several special cases, we show the results of a successful test of our algorithm on a large system.

Keywords

tensegrity structures, stability analysis, rank-deficiency manifold, marching processes, limit placements

Milestones

Received: 9 May 2006

Accepted: 9 October 2006

Published: 1 July 2007

Authors

Andrea Micheletti
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile Università di Roma Tor Vergata Via Politecnico 1 00133 Rome Italy

William O. Williams
William O. Williams Department of Mathematical Sciences Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890 United States
http://www.math.cmu.edu/~wow/williams

Vol. 2, No. 5, 2007

Andrea Micheletti and William O. Williams

Abstract

Keywords

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Authors