LayOpt : an educational web-app for truss layout optimization

Abstract

A new interactive truss layout optimization web-app has been developed for educational use. This has been designed to be used on a range of devices, from mobile phones to desktop PCs. Truss designs are first generated via numerical layout optimization and then rationalized via geometry optimization. It is then shown that these designs can be simplified using a computationally inexpensive process that allows the user to control the trade-off between complexity and structural volume. The process involves the use of smooth Heaviside representations of member existence variables, with nodal slack forces employed that allow unstable intermediate truss structures. Full details of the web-app are provided in this contribution, from underlying formulation to cloud computing implementation. A range of numerical examples are used to demonstrate the efficacy of the web-app, and to show how it can potentially be used in educational and practical engineering settings.

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Item Type:	Article
Authors/Creators:	Fairclough, H.E. He, L. Pritchard, T.J. Gilbert, M.
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2021. Open Access: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Keywords:	Truss layout optimization; Web-app; Heaviside simplification; Topology optimization; Geometry optimization
Dates:	Published: October 2021 Published (online): 7 August 2021 Accepted: 28 June 2021
Institution:	The University of Sheffield
Academic Units:	The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > Department of Civil and Structural Engineering (Sheffield)
Depositing User:	Symplectic Sheffield
Date Deposited:	27 Jul 2021 10:57
Last Modified:	09 Mar 2022 14:43
Status:	Published
Publisher:	Springer Nature
Refereed:	Yes
Identification Number:	10.1007/s00158-021-03009-8
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID):	oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:176240

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LayOpt : an educational web-app for truss layout optimization

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