Parametric Design of Tensegrity-Origami Structures

Lightweight, deployable, and reusable structures attracted increasing at-tention over the years in terms of construction sustainability. In this research area,tensegrity and origami-inspired structures were extensively investigated for differentapplications. This contribution focuses on the design of two-dimensional geometricpatterns of vertices, edges, and faces that can be used for both tensegrity and origamistructures, which are here analyzed in connection to each other. The design methodol-ogy is based on a semi-analytical form-finding procedure in which two set of equationsare simultaneously solved: the rank-deficiency conditions on the equilibrium operatorfor the tensegrity structure and the developability conditions for the correspondingorigami. In addition, the relation between geometry and selfstress of the obtainedstructures is analyzed by parametric simulations. A 3D modeling workspace – com-bining GrasshopperTMand MatlabTMcodes – supports the design phases from thestudy of the geometric pattern, satisfying the rank-deficiency and the developabilityconditions, to the evaluation of the selfstressed tensegrity configuration. The caseof a Snelson tensegrity tower functioning as a lightweight, deployable, and reusablepavilion is considered to demonstrate the proposed methodology for the design oftensegrity-origami structures.