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Form-finding of tensegrity structures using double singular value decomposition

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Abstract

A numerical form-finding procedure of tensegrity structures is developed. The only required information is the topology and the types of members. The singular value decompositions of the force density and equilibrium matrices are performed iteratively to find the feasible sets of nodal coordinates and force densities which satisfy the minimum required deficiencies of these two matrices, respectively. An approach of defining a unique configuration of tensegrity structure by specifying an independent set of nodal coordinates is provided. An explanation is given for the preservation in self-equilibrium status of the tensegrity structures under affine transformation. Two- and three-dimensional examples are illustrated to demonstrate the efficiency and robustness of the proposed method in searching stable self-equilibrium configurations of tensegrity structures.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by Basic Research Laboratory Program of the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology through NRF2011-0027949, and by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE), Korea, under the Convergence Information Technology Research Center (Convergence-ITRC) support program (NIPA-2011-C6150-1101-0003) supervised by the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA). The support is gratefully acknowledged.

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  1. Department of Architectural Engineering, Sejong University, 98 Kunja Dong, Kwangjin Ku, Seoul, 143-747, Korea

    Hoang Chi Tran & Jaehong Lee

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  1. Hoang Chi Tran
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  2. Jaehong Lee
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Correspondence to Jaehong Lee.

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Tran, H.C., Lee, J. Form-finding of tensegrity structures using double singular value decomposition. Engineering with Computers 29, 71–86 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00366-011-0245-7

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