Self-equilibrium and super-stability of truncated regular polyhedral tensegrity structures: a unified analytical solution

Abstract

In spite of their great importance and numerous applications in many civil, aerospace and biological systems, our understanding of tensegrity structures is still quite preliminary, fragmented and incomplete. Here we establish a unified closed-form analytical solution for the necessary and sufficient condition that ensures the existence of self-equilibrated and super-stable states for truncated regular polyhedral tensegrity structures, including truncated tetrahedral, cubic, octahedral, dodecahedral and icosahedral tensegrities.