Self-equilibrium and stability of regular truncated tetrahedral tensegrity structures

This paper presents analytical conditions of self-equilibrium and super-stability for the regular truncated tetrahedral tensegrity structures, nodes of which have one-to-one correspondence to the tetrahedral group. These conditions are presented in terms of force densities, by investigating the block-diagonalized force density matrix. The block-diagonalized force density matrix, with independent sub-matrices lying on its leading diagonal, is derived by making use of the tetrahedral symmetry via group representation theory. The condition for self-equilibrium is found by enforcing the force density matrix to have the necessary number of nullities, which is four for three-dimensional structures. The condition for super-stability is further presented by guaranteeing positive semi-definiteness of the force density matrix.