Enumeration-screening method for the design of simple polygonal tensegrities

Area of Science:

• Engineering
• Materials Science
• Robotics

Background:

• Tensegrities, structures of pre-compressed bars and pre-stretched strings, have diverse applications in architecture, soft robotics, and metamaterials.
• Designing complex tensegrity systems requires efficient methods for exploring possible configurations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose an enumeration-screening method for designing planar tensegrities with simple polygonal shapes.
• To analyze the topological characteristics and stability of these polygonal tensegrities.

Main Methods:

• Developing an enumeration-screening approach to systematically generate planar tensegrity designs.
• Defining polygonal tensegrities where strings form a simple polygon and each node has one bar.
• Analyzing the exponential growth in the number of possible tensegrity topologies with increasing bars.

Main Results:

• The proposed method successfully designs planar tensegrities based on simple polygonal shapes.
• The number of unique tensegrity topologies increases exponentially with the number of bars.
• All designed tensegrity topologies were demonstrated to achieve self-equilibrated and stable configurations.

Conclusions:

• The enumeration-screening method provides a systematic way to design planar polygonal tensegrities.
• These structures offer a foundational understanding of tensegrity topology.
• Polygonal tensegrities can serve as building blocks for novel 2D and 3D tensegrity structures.