Tensegrity

Tensegrity is an English portmanteau of tension ( tensile stress) and integrity ( wholeness, cohesion). It refers to the Richard Buckminster Fuller and Kenneth Snelson attributed the invention of a stable rod plant where the bars do not touch each other, merely by pulling elements are connected to each other (eg ropes).

In the generalized case, the only compressive stresses subjected rods are replaced by arbitrarily shaped rigid body, which, by the tension elements interconnecting also bending and shear stresses are generated. An example is the well-known even before the invention of the spoked Tensegrities consisting of hub, spokes and rim. The thin spokes act here as tension members. The interconnected with them rigid body, the hub and the rim. In the wheel rim bending stress is superposed on the radial stress of the compressive stress.

The authorship of this rod work and some versions as spatial structures is controversial, as early as the beginning of the 20th century, the Latvian constructivist Karl Ioganson with these structures is said to have experimented with.