Effects of member loss on the structural integrity of tensegrity systems

Abstract

Tensegrity systems are statically and kinematically indeterminate systems. It may be mistakenly believed that this inherent redundancy provides a large measure of safety against collapse. However, a number of members are critical to system integrity, with the loss of any of them likely to produce serious strength reductions. Furthermore, when these members are lost suddenly, their forces are shed into the structure in a dynamic manner, leading to yet more severe damage. This paper presents a numerical investigation into the static and dynamic response of plane tensegrity systems due to the gradual and sudden member loss. According to the results of this study, in some cases, the dynamic effect of member loss caused the occurrence of progressive collapse. It was shown that in several cases, static analysis cannot provide a correct and realistic picture of the behavior of the damaged tensegrity system and would lead to a significant overestimate of the load carrying capacity of the structure. The conclusions drawn from such a study can in turn, lead to the suggestion of some simple guidelines for the design of such systems.