On the forces that cable webs under tension can support and how to design cable webs to channel stresses
In many applications of structural engineering, the following question arises: given a set of forces , , …, applied at prescribed points , , …, , under what constraints on the forces does there exist a truss structure (or wire web) with all elements under tension that supports these forces? Here...
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Published in | Proceedings of the Royal Society. A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences Vol. 475; no. 2223; p. 20180781 |
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Main Authors | , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
England
Royal Society, The
01.03.2019
The Royal Society Publishing |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | In many applications of structural engineering, the following question arises: given a set of forces
,
, …,
applied at prescribed points
,
, …,
, under what constraints on the forces does there exist a truss structure (or wire web) with all elements under tension that supports these forces? Here we provide answer to such a question for any configuration of the terminal points
,
, …,
in the two- and three-dimensional cases. Specifically, the existence of a web is guaranteed by a necessary and sufficient condition on the loading which corresponds to a finite dimensional linear programming problem. In two dimensions, we show that any such web can be replaced by one in which there are at most
elementary loops, where elementary means that the loop cannot be subdivided into subloops, and where
is the number of forces
,
, …,
applied at points strictly within the convex hull of
,
, …,
. In three dimensions, we show that, by slightly perturbing
,
, …,
, there exists a uniloadable web supporting this loading. Uniloadable means it supports this loading and all positive multiples of it, but not any other loading. Uniloadable webs provide a mechanism for channelling stress in desired ways. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 Electronic supplementary material is available online at https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4421573. |
ISSN: | 1364-5021 1471-2946 |
DOI: | 10.1098/rspa.2018.0781 |