Elastoplastic truss design using a displacement based optimization (Q1611978)

It is shown that the numerical solution of a static structural problem, whose elements have a limited resistance caused by the onset of plasticity, requires the solution of a nonlinear algebraic system with constraints on the unknowns. The optimization of the total weight reduces to a nonlinear programming problem which can be formulated either in terms of nodal displacements or by assuming the areas of the cross-sections as independent variables.