Optimal Location of Redundants for Prestressing Adaptive Trusses

This paper describes the location selection of minimunt number of actuator mounted redundant bars for complete prestressing of a determinate truss. Two computationally simple algorithms are presented to obtain the optimal locations of the redundants. The optimal bar prestresses are then obtained by using the least squares solution for the redundant bar forces, knowing the desired list of bar prestresses. The paper then proposes the use of a positive scale parameter. to prevent local buckling/rupture of individual bars of the resulting indeterminate truss and its global buckling. The procedure is illustrated on a simple two-dimensional truss.