Efficient Symmetry Method for Calculating Integral Prestress Modes of Statically Indeterminate Cable-Strut Structures
Publication: Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 141, Issue 10
Abstract
Novel statically indeterminate structures generally contain both self-stress modes and internal mechanisms, and have few or no load-bearing capacities before being prestressed. These structures could not maintain stable equilibrium states until appropriate initial prestresses are assigned. The initial prestress design is the basic and key step for novel kinematically indeterminate structures. In this study, an efficient symmetry method is proposed for determining integral prestress modes for various cable-strut structures with multiple independent self-stress modes. Group theory and its matrix representations are introduced to calculate the linear independent self-stress modes retaining full symmetry. Subsequently, integral prestress modes are directly extracted from the null space of the first block matrix of the symmetry-adapted equilibrium matrix. Manual classifications of member types and double singular value decompositions on large-sized matrices are avoided in the calculation process. Therefore, the symmetry method shows great advantage in terms of computation efficiency, especially for the structures with high-order symmetry, complex geometric configurations, or many independent self-stress modes. Illustrative examples are presented to verify the robustness and efficiency in calculating integral prestress modes for different types of symmetric cable-strut structures. The proposed method can play an important role in the force-finding analysis and optimum prestress design of various cable-strut structures.
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Acknowledgments
This work has been supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51278116), the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions, and Scientific Research Foundation of Graduate School of Southeast University (Grant No. YBPY1201). The first author would like to thank the China Scholarship Council for supporting his stay at the University of Cambridge and Dr. Simon D. Guest for his guidance and help. The authors are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments.
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Published In
Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 141 • Issue 10 • October 2015
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© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 7, 2014
Accepted: Nov 14, 2014
Published online: Dec 19, 2014
Discussion open until: May 19, 2015
Published in print: Oct 1, 2015
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