Neural network-based adaptive control is considered for active control of a highly flexible truss structure which may be used to support solar sail membranes. The objective is to suppress unwanted vibrations in SAFE (Solar Array Flight Experiment) boom_ a test-bed located at NASA. Compared to previous tests that restrained truss structures in planar motion, full three dimensional motions are te...

This paper presents an analytical method for analyzing trusses with severe geometrically nonlinear behavior. The main objective is to find analytical solutions for trusses with different axial forces in the bars. The methodology is based on truss kinematics, elastic constitutive laws and equilibrium of nodal forces. The proposed formulation can be applied to hyper elastic materials, such as rub...

The performance characteristics of a truss core sandwich panel design based on the 3D Kagom e has been measured and compared with earlier simulations. Panels have been fabricated by investment casting and tested in compression, shear and bending. The isotropic nature of this core design has been confirmed. The superior performance relative to truss designs based on the tetrahedron has been demo...

The main goal of the structural optimization is to minimize the weight of structures while satisfying all design requirements imposed by design codes. In this paper, the Artificial Bee Colony algorithm with an adaptive penalty function approach (ABC-AP) is proposed tominimize theweight of truss structures. The ABC algorithm is swarm intelligence based optimization technique inspired by the inte...

A tetrahedral strip is a tetrahedron-tetrahedron truss where any tetrahedron has two neighbors except those in the extremes which have only one. Unless any of the tetrahedra degenerate, such a truss is rigid. In this case, if the distance between the strip endpoints is imposed, any rod length in the truss is constrained by all the others to attain discrete values. In this paper, it is shown how...

Due to the problems of potential corrosion and thermal expansion differences between traditional metal connecting pieces and carbon fiber poles, it is difficult for them to meet the operating requirements of truss structures in the environment of stratosphere. Based on the large scale composite space truss structure of stratosphere aerostats, the carbon fiber flange connection joints were studi...

fragility curves represent the probabilities that structural damages, under various levels of seismic excitation, will exceed the specified damage states by means of earthquake intensity damage relations. conceptual aspects related to seismic vulnerability, damage and risk evaluation are discussed first, together with a short review of the most widely used possibilities for the seismic evaluati...

In this paper, an approach for conducting a Reliability-Based Design Optimization (RBDO) of truss structures with linked-discrete design variables is proposed. The sections of the truss members are selected from the AISC standard tables and thus the design variables that represent the properties of each section are linked. Latin hypercube sampling is used in the evaluation of the structural rel...

Tensegrity structures are a special class of lightweight truss structures, where all truss elements are axially loaded and tensile truss elements are made of strings. This paper presents the dynamic analysis of a tensegrity structure by comparing a finite element model with an identified model obtained from experimental data. Experimental data is obtained by placing a three stage tensegrity str...

This paper presents an interactive framework for the design of truss structures with incorporation of the subjective influence of user feedback in the design process. In the devised framework, the truss chords are described using Non-Uniform Rational Basis Splines (NURBS), a representation typically used in computer aided design (CAD) for describing free-form geometry. This allows for a conveni...