TENSEGRITY |
Tensegrities don't necessarily have to be made by straight struts. But, made of bended struts, it looses one important charming quality. Normally a tensegrity is a sculpture where "tension" and "compression" (push and pull) are strictly separated within the structure. This nice property gets lost when bended struts are used.
Inspired by the logo of the Olympic Games I got the idea to make a tensegrity with five hoops. In the end I decided I preferred all the hoops mingled together instead of the olympic formation.
Stephen M. Levin mentioned in a Fuller discussion group geodesic 00622 the following: "In an ideal tensegrity, tension and compression are separated and struts are pure compression elements. Any column under compression develops internal shear and tends to bow in the middle, re: Euler's buckling law. Theoretically, a strut would have pure compression running straight down its central core and no tensile component, a line with only one dimension, otherwise you would have shear and bending moments that are intolerable in a true tensegrity. Bows are tensed on their convex side and compressed on their concave side, tension and compression are not separated and, therefore, bows cannot be part of true tensegrities..."