A fast strategy to determine efficient shape changes of adaptable v-expander tensegrity columns

The quality of being adaptable/deployable of tensegrity structures provides intriguing challenges for researchers and designers. In this work, the shape-change capabilities of a V-Expander tensegrity column are analyzed: A numerical investigation is carried out for the study of the cable-Actuation process for a column composed of elementary V-Expander tensegrity cells sharing horizontal cables. The actuation is performed by considering suitable sets of active and passive cables among the whole set of cables of the column. The attention is focused on the following kinds of shape-changes: stretching/shrinking, flexure, shear and torsion. Moreover, a strategy for predicting the nonlinear response of the tensegrity column in the cable-Actuation process is proposed. This strategy allows for estimating quickly, among all the possible choices of active and passive cable sets, those leading to maximum displacements or rotations and to the minimum ratio between the normalized work of active cables and the deformation of the column. Further numerical analyses are performed by varying the aspect ratio of the V-Expander cell, to evaluate the effects of changes in the geometrical parameters on the nonlinear actuation process of the column.