Optimal Joint Positions for Space Trusses

An iterative procedure for determining the joint positions corresponding to a minimum mass space truss is presented. Displacement constraints and nonconstant stress constraints (stability) are taken into account. The truss is presumed to carry consecutively a large number of different systems of forces. The iteration includes a sequence of linear programming problems (SLP, with move-limits), and for each of these problems only the nearby constraints are considered. Analytical expressions are given for the gradients describing the linear problems. A dome is optimized using different constraints.