Viewing Buckminsterfullerene as a Tensegrity Structure

Viewing Buckminsterfullerene as a Tensegrity Structure

by Russell Z Chu
February 23, 2003

The representation of the Buckminsterfullerene (Carbon 60) as a truncated icosahedron is structurally unstable. Likewise the cube is structurally unstable and it could be stabilized by introducing diagonal tensional elements at the faces or viewed as a compound structure of two tetrahedra with the cube as tensional elements.










I came to the understanding of Fullerene tensegrities from my research of crystalline structures in “Mapping the hidden patterns in sphere packing”. In this research I realized that a stable cubical structural system could be viewed as a tensegrity system. That there are secondary structural elements that account for stabilizing the primary unstable system.

With this understanding I decided to look at C60 for the secondary structural elements that would stabilize its primary truncated icosahedron structure.





















The figure above is a screen capture of a model built with SpringDance 3D program.

The primary structure of C60 in red color is what we are used to seeing, the truncated icosahedron.

The secondary structural elements are tensional elements. They are the yellow tension elements inside the pentagons and the aqua tensional elements inside the hexagons. These tensional elements are all the secondary connections from one carbon atom to the next nearest atom. The primary connections are the red truncated icosahedron.

This tensegrity system is similar to the bicycle wheel, but instead of spokes it is a spherical tensional net. The bouncy property of C60 can be attributed to the tensegrity structural system.