Analytical Form-Finding for Highly Symmetric and Super-Stable Configurations of Rhombic Truncated Regular Polyhedral Tensegrities

Abstract

Tensegrities have exhibited great importance and numerous applications in many mechanical, aerospace, and biological systems, for which symmetric configurations are preferred as the tensegrity prototypes. Besides the well-known prismatic tensegrities, another ingenious group of tensegrities with high symmetry is the truncated regular polyhedral (TRP) tensegrities, including Z-based and rhombic types. Although Z-based TRP tensegrities have been widely studied in the form-finding and application issues, rhombic TRP tensegrities have been much less reported due to the lack of explicit solutions that can produce their symmetric configurations. Our former work presented a unified solution for the rhombic TRP tensegrities by involving the force-density method which yet cannot control structural geometric sizes and may produce irregular shapes. Here, using the structural equilibrium matrix-based form-finding method, we establish some analytical equations, in terms of structural geometric parameters and force-densities in elements, to directly construct the self-equilibrated, symmetric configurations of rhombic TRP tensegrities, i.e., tetrahedral, cubic/octahedral, and dodecahedral/icosahedral configurations. Moreover, it is proved, both theoretically and numerically, that all of our obtained rhombic TRP tensegrities are super-stable and thus can be stable for any level of the force-densities without causing element material failure, which is beneficial to their actual construction. This study helps to readily design rhombic tensegrities with high symmetry and develop novel biomechanical models, mechanical metamaterials, and advanced mechanical devices.