Sensitivity and optimisation procedures for truss structures under large displacement

The work presented here focuses on the development of suitable discretised formulations, for large-displacement shape and non-shape design sensitivity analysis (DSA), which enable the straightforward incorporation of structur al optimisation into established finite element analysis (FEA) codes. For t he generalised displacement-based functional the design sensitivity vector has been expressed in terms of displacement sensitivity. The Total Lagrangi an formulation is utilised for modelling of large deformation of truss stru ctures. The variational formulation of the sensitivity analysis procedure i s discretised by using "pseudo" - finite elements, Results are presented fo r the sensitivity analysis and optimisation of standard truss structures. F or the purposes of this work, the analysis and optimisation procedures outl ined below are incorporated into the FEA code ABAQUS.