Rigidity of generic random tensegrity structures

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Sudhakar, Vishal, Stephenson, William, McInerney, James P., Rocklin, D. Zeb
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Sudhakar, Vishal
Stephenson, William
McInerney, James P.
Rocklin, D. Zeb
author_facet Sudhakar, Vishal
Stephenson, William
McInerney, James P.
Rocklin, D. Zeb
contents Many mechanical structures, both engineered and biological, combine heavy rigid elements such as bones and beams with lightweight flexible ones such as cables and membranes. These are referred to as tensegrities, reflecting that cables can only support extensile tension. We model such systems via simulations of depleted triangular lattices in which we minimize the energies of tensegrities subject to strained boundary conditions. When there are equal numbers of cables and struts (which support only compressive tension), a cable and a strut together each contribute as much toward rigidity as a rod, with the two contributions being equal in the case of shear strain. Due to the highly nonaffine deformations at the rigidity transitions, the contribution of a cable (strut) can be significant even under global compression (dilation) despite a cable's inability to resist local compression. Further, we find that when neighboring elements tend to point away from one another, as is common in real systems, cables interact significantly more strongly with other cables than do cables with struts in supporting stress. These phenomena shed new light on a variety of realistic, disordered systems at the threshold of mechanical stability.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_18605
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Rigidity of generic random tensegrity structures
Sudhakar, Vishal
Stephenson, William
McInerney, James P.
Rocklin, D. Zeb
Soft Condensed Matter
Many mechanical structures, both engineered and biological, combine heavy rigid elements such as bones and beams with lightweight flexible ones such as cables and membranes. These are referred to as tensegrities, reflecting that cables can only support extensile tension. We model such systems via simulations of depleted triangular lattices in which we minimize the energies of tensegrities subject to strained boundary conditions. When there are equal numbers of cables and struts (which support only compressive tension), a cable and a strut together each contribute as much toward rigidity as a rod, with the two contributions being equal in the case of shear strain. Due to the highly nonaffine deformations at the rigidity transitions, the contribution of a cable (strut) can be significant even under global compression (dilation) despite a cable's inability to resist local compression. Further, we find that when neighboring elements tend to point away from one another, as is common in real systems, cables interact significantly more strongly with other cables than do cables with struts in supporting stress. These phenomena shed new light on a variety of realistic, disordered systems at the threshold of mechanical stability.
title Rigidity of generic random tensegrity structures
topic Soft Condensed Matter
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.18605