Optimality of a fully stressed design

For a truss a fully stressed state is reached when all its members are util ized to their full strength capacity. Historically, engineers considered su ch a design optimum. But recently this optimality has been questioned, espe cially since the weight of the structure is not explicitly used in fully st ressed design calculations. This paper examines optimality of the fully str essed design (FSD) with analytical and graphical illustrations. Solutions f or a set of examples obtained by using the FSD method and optimization meth ods numerically confirm the optimality of the FSD. The FSD, which can be ob tained with a small amount of calculation, can be extended to displacement constraints and to nontruss-type structures. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.