I'm no ME (EE writing firmware mostly) but if the center bar were connected to the outer ring would you get additional strength? You wouldn't lose much if any visibility if it extended to the edges. The fibers would still give a better viewing area and you might have less wobble on impact which would be good for integrity.
Yeah, it absolutely would. Pretty good insight for and EE ;) I’m holding off on that for now because the floating bar allows for the ropes to help absorb the impact in the case of a direct hit on the bar. That should, in theory, let me use a thinner center bar and allow for better visibility. Second reason is just that it’s cool. Not a great rational reason but I love tensegrity structures and I want to exhaust all the possibilities before I move off of it. Plus, this will likely be a (smaller) problem even if I move to a fixed central bar so I can carry the lessons over.
I'm no ME (EE writing firmware mostly) but if the center bar were connected to the outer ring would you get additional strength? You wouldn't lose much if any visibility if it extended to the edges. The fibers would still give a better viewing area and you might have less wobble on impact which would be good for integrity.
Yeah, it absolutely would. Pretty good insight for and EE ;) I’m holding off on that for now because the floating bar allows for the ropes to help absorb the impact in the case of a direct hit on the bar. That should, in theory, let me use a thinner center bar and allow for better visibility. Second reason is just that it’s cool. Not a great rational reason but I love tensegrity structures and I want to exhaust all the possibilities before I move off of it. Plus, this will likely be a (smaller) problem even if I move to a fixed central bar so I can carry the lessons over.