Dismountable Tensegrity Structures

Tensegrity structures offer the most attractive solution for temporary shelter purpose due to their flexibility, lightweight, low cost, self-supporting configuration and easy deployability. This book presents fabrication, analysis and monitoring the behaviour of a new type of tensegrity based dismountable roof structure. A tensegrity module both in strut mode and cable mode and a tensegrity grid is fabricated, instrumented and tested in the laboratory. The monitored structure is also analyzed using finite element method (FEM) and the numerical results compared with the experimental observations.The behaviour of tensegrity structure under different loads (dead loads, live loads, lack of fit in cable, thermal loads and wind loads) and their combinations are also studied. The validated finite element models have been utilized to carry out important parametric study. Application of artificial neural network is explored for optimal design of tensegrity grid structure. Both strain gauges and piezo-transducers are found to complement each other by assisting in load history retrieval (LHR) and structural health monitoring (SHM) respectively.