Contact : Pierre Latteur
The architectural potential of tensegrity structures is proven. Yet, paradoxically, very few real construction projects have been built around the world. The main reasons are complex construction processes, lack of design and optimization guidelines, and excessive self-weight due to the pre-stress needed to guarantee stiffness and dynamic behavior. Hence, optimizing the stiffness and self-weight is a key aspect when designing a tensegrity structure.
Pierre Latteur’s team has demonstrated the validity of a design and optimization methodology, called “theory of morphological indicators”, able to rigorously select, within a family of structures, the geometries with a maximum stiffness or/and a minimum self-weight.
Our aim is to use the theory of morphological indicator as a brand new powerful tool for the design of tensegrity structures, in particular tensegrity footbridges, such as the “snake footbridge” that we developped, shown hereunder.
