Prestress

Read here about the role, significance and function of prestress in tensegrity structures.

Overview

Prestressing is the intentional creation of permanent stresses in a structure for the purpose of improving its performance under various service conditions. A prestressed structure is one whose overall integrity, stability and security depend, primarily, on prestressing.

Prestress is conventionally divided into compression and tension prestress:

• Precompression, usually by the weight of the structure itself
• Pretension with embedded or external tendons
• Post-tension with bonded or unbonded tendons

Prestress is a critical component of any independent tensegrity structure, meaning a tensegrity that achieves its structural cohesion solely by the interplay of its tendons and struts, without any reliance on external scaffolding or anchors.

Links and references

See also stress, scale.