Negative stiffness behaviors emerging in elastic instabilities of prismatic tensegrities under torsional loading

Tensegrities with elastic instabilities hold potential applications in advanced sensors and actuators, energy storage/adsorption equipments, and folding/unfolding devices. In this paper, we explore the negative stiffness behaviors of prismatic tensegrities emerging in their instability responses under torsion. The explicit conditions for the occurrence of negative structural stiffness in specific deformation regimes are established in terms of three dimensionless parameters. Several representative tensegrities are designed based on the obtained conditions, and their mechanical responses are calculated to validate the predicted negative stiffness properties. This work is helpful for the design of prismatic tensegrities to exhibit featured instabilities with particular functions. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.