Hexagonal design for stiffening trusses (Q2255366)

This paper may be seen as a first simplified attempt to validate a proposal for a new design. The final purpose is to suggest a new three-dimensional design for stiffening trusses to be put under the roadway of a bridge. The author together with some colleagues has shown that most of the commonly adopted mathematical models fail, and that they could exhibit a phenomenon of self-excited oscillations in some semilinear fourth-order ODEs (this phenomenon is also visible in some fourth-order PDEs arising from elasticity). Mathematically, the problem consists in strengthening a plate \( \Omega \subset R^2\) with some trusses, identified here with a planar line \(\gamma \subset \Omega\). The truss is chosen to be a union of polygons \(P\) fitting side to side. The only regular polygons satisfying this property are equilateral triangles, squares and regular hexagons. It is shown that the regular hexagons have better performances from several different points of view. The author introduces the average polar moment of inertia, a function of the \(L^2\)-norm of distances from the boundary. Then he proves that the hexagonal trusses perform better also from this point of view since they minimize this value among the considered classes of polygons. Several parameters are introduced in order to measure the performances of polygonal stiffening trusses for a given plate \(\Omega\). Each segment of the truss is more resistant to the moments of forces due to applied loads. In order to solve the dilemma between economy, one could use thinner trusses segments in the case of hexagonal shapes. The author proves that the minimal distance to the boundary and its variance are the same for all shapes considered. This suggests to introduce a new parameter measuring the effect of distances from the boundary. Also for this parameter, the best performances are obtained by hexagonal trusses. The stored elastic energy for the shapes under observation is numerically measured.