Symmetric prismatic tensegrity structures: Part I. Configuration and stability

This paper presents a simple and efficient method to determine the self-equilibrated configurations of prismatic tensegrity structures, nodes and members of which have dihedral symmetry. It is demonstrated that stability of this class of structures is not only directly related to the connectivity of members, but is also sensitive to their geometry (height/radius ratio), and is also dependent on the level of self-stress and stiffness of members. A catalogue of the structures with relatively small number of members is presented based on the stability investigations.