Advanced form-finding of tensegrity structures

A numerical method is presented for form-finding of tensegrity structures. The topology and the types of members are the only information that requires in this form-finding process. The eigenvalue decomposition of the force density matrix and the single value decomposition of the equilibrium matrix are performed iteratively to find the feasible sets of nodal coordinates and force densities which satisfy the minimum required rank deficiencies of the force density and equilibrium matrices, respectively. Based on numerical examples it is found that the proposed method is very efficient and robust in searching self-equilibrium configurations of tensegrity structures.