An origami-inspired tensegrity structure with multistability

Tensegrity structures have been harnessed in the design of many reconfigurable and deployable systems due to their high strength to weight ratio, stiffness tunability and multistability programmability. In this paper, we present a design methodology of an origami-inspired multistable tensegrity structure that can achieve up to three stable configurations in one unit cell. This class-3 tensegrity structure can achieve equilibrium states at the fully deployed and flat folded states, and the transition between its stable states is controlled with a one directional displacement, a feature not observed in previous tensegrity elements. To design this system the required input are the three heights at which a stable configuration is desired. At each height the total strain energy of the system of strings is evaluated to select the unstretched length and stiffness values of each string that satisfy the conditions of stability. Analytically it was found that achieving a stable configuration at each height is affected by the number of strings that are in tension at this point, and the deformation path, stiffness and unstretched length of each string.