Cretu, Simona-Mariana

Read here about a tensegrity researcher.

Overview

Simona-Mariana Cretu is a member of the Department of Applied Mechanics Faculty of Mechanics, University of Craiova, Craiova, Romania, Simona-Mariana Cretu has published several survey articles on tensegrity.

Partial List of Publications

Tensegrity Concept – From Natural Systems to Robots

This paper presents: the tensegrity concept applied to inorganic matter (the construction of the “buckyball” model for water; the tensegrity icosahedron for the hexagonal model of water); a review of the natural tensegrity forms found in living life, from micro to macro level and the different tensegrities which approximate them, including some realisations of the members of the scientific association “Methodology of technical sciences teaching”, from the Faculty of Mechanics, University of Craiova; new trends towards optimally designing mechanisms and mobile robots.

Link: http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-4020-8915-2_66

Tensegrity as a Structural Framework in Life Sciences and Bioengineering

Excerpt: In the fifth decade BC, Leucippus and Democritus had considered matter to be formed of indivisible particles, atoms, which were of all dimensions and forms. Pythagoreans presented the universe from the point of view of mathematics, asserting that everything is made up of numbers. Plato believes, like Empedocles, that matter is a combination of the four fundamental elements: fire, air, water and earth. In his book Timaeus (c.360BC), he makes known a new theory, equating the tetrahedron with the element fire, the octahedron with air, the icosahedron with water, the cube with earth and the dodecahedron with the stuff of which the constellations and heavens were made.

Link: http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-1-4020-8778-3_27

Tensegrity applied to modelling the motion of viruses

By Cretu Simona-Mariana, Brinzan Gabriela-Catalina

A considerable number of viruses’ structures have been discovered and more are expected to be identified. Different viruses’ symmetries can be observed at the nanoscale level. The mechanical models of some viruses realised by scientists are described in this paper, none of which has taken into consideration the internal deformation of subsystems. The authors’ models for some viruses’ elements are introduced, with rigid and flexible links, which reproduce the movements of viruses including internal deformations of the subunits.

Link: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10409-011-0402-7

Innovative Design In Tensegrity Field

Link: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877705811001342

In nature, many systems function similarly to tensegrities, at all scale levels. The paper presents some applications of the method of creativity treated in [4], having the intention to reduce the types of structures of mechanical tensegrities to a finite number of models; so that we can simplify the design, in the same time maintaining a great variety of functions. The other purpose of this study is to obtain new tensegrity mechanisms that have the same structure and function in a similar way to natural systems.

Links and References

Cretu on ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Simona-Mariana_Cretu/