Redundancy and Resilience in Reciprocal Systems

Abstract

This work presents some new methods for the comprehension of reciprocal frames and interlocked elements in order to design more resilient systems. First the authors propose a new method and mathematical notation based on graph theory to describe the topology of such interlocking systems. We then give an alternate construction of interlocked element with horizontal contact surface, minimizing thrust, so that any given topology can be applied to a reciprocal system. We choose three different topologies with a level of redundancy, and apply the method in order to design three different interlocked elements and reciprocal systems. At last the elements are 3d-printed, and we analyse the first experimental results and the failure mechanism observed and then build failure graphs that will help analysing the resilience of these interlocking systems.