A Software Tool for Simulating Motions and Loading in Planar Tensegrity Structures

Tensegrity structures are unique in the sense that they tend to be overconstrained as mechanisms, yet they can be mobile due to the elastic nature of their tensile elements. The ability to easily visualize these motion properties would help designers to create new and useful tensegrity mechanisms. In this paper, a simple and interactive computational tool with a graphical user interface is presented for visualizing loading and displacements in tensegrity structures. This tool can also be extended for use with traditional static structures, including both determinate and indeterminate structures, as well as mechanisms.