Related Experiment Video
Updated: Oct 10, 2025

Construction and Systematical Symmetric Studies of a Series of Supramolecular Clusters with Binary or Ternary Ammonium Triphenylacetates
Published on: February 15, 2016
Reentrant tensegrity: A three-periodic, chiral, tensegrity structure that is auxetic
Mathias Oster1, Marcelo A Dias2, Timo de Wolff3
1Institut für Mathematik, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany.
Abstract:
We present a three-periodic, chiral, tensegrity structure and demonstrate that it is auxetic. Our tensegrity structure is constructed using the chiral symmetry Π+ cylinder packing, transforming cylinders to elastic elements and cylinder contacts to incompressible rods. The resulting structure displays local reentrant geometry at its vertices and is shown to be auxetic when modeled as an equilibrium configuration of spatial constraints subject to a quasi-static deformation. When the structure is subsequently modeled as a lattice material with elastic elements, the auxetic behavior is again confirmed through finite element modeling. The cubic symmetry of the original structure means that the auxetic behavior is observed in both perpendicular directions and is close to isotropic in magnitude. This structure could be the simplest three-dimensional analog to the two-dimensional reentrant honeycomb. This, alongside the chirality of the structure, makes it an interesting design target for multifunctional materials.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
Space Trusses
At the core of a space truss lies the fundamental unit known as the tetrahedron. This structure is composed of six members that form a three-dimensional shape...
Space Trusses: Problem Solving
Consider a tripod consisting of a tetrahedral space truss with a ball-and-socket joint at C. Suppose the height and lengths of the horizontal and vertical...
Torsional Pendulum
As long as the rigid body's angular displacement is small, its oscillation can be modeled as a linear angular oscillation. The amplitude of the oscillation is an angle. The role of mass is played...
Chirality
Chiral objects exhibit a sense of handedness when they interact with another chiral object. For example, our left foot can only fit in the left shoe and not in the right shoe. Achiral objects — objects that have...
Molecules with Multiple Chiral Centers
Torsion of Noncircular Members

