Abstract

Purpose

     With the development of engineering structures towards the direction of large-scale, light-weight and multi-function, truss structures are utilized widely in the aerospace and civil sectors due to their outstanding advantages, e.g. light weight, large stiffness ratio and high packaging efficiency. Meanwhile, investigating the nonlinear dynamic mechanism and developing vibration control strategies for large space truss are of practical importance and give rise to interesting scientific issues.

Methods

     Finite element method is a popular approach but brings great challenges to the nonlinear dynamic analysis and vibration controller design of truss structures due to the high degree of freedom of the full-scale finite element model. Therefore, the equivalent continuum modeling methodology becomes one of the most important developing trends to address these difficulties and is of high-efficiency especially for the nonlinear dynamic analysis.

Results

     In the present paper, the research status about the equivalent continuum modeling of truss structures is sorted out including equivalent modeling methods (the energy equivalent method, the homogenization method, the displacement equivalent criterion, etc.) together with their advantages and drawbacks. Issues on static, dynamic, and buckling analyses of various structural styles (beamlike truss, platelike truss, hoop truss, etc.) with different connection joints are discussed.

Conclusions

     More specifically, the research progresses on equivalent nonlinear continuum modeling and the design of vibration control law of the large truss structures are investigated, respectively, and the gap on the nonlinear analysis and vibration control is summarized for the existing researches. Additionally, comment, perspective and opportunity are proposed which could be valuable for the future developments of equivalent continuum modeling and vibration control of the large truss structures.

Introduction

     Motivated by the ever-increasing demands for aerospace structures, the new opportunity to create large space deployable truss structures also call for advanced equivalent continuum modeling techniques, in particular when the number of the degrees of freedom (DOFs) increases dramatically for the large-scale truss structures [1–۴]. Also, the truss structures are widely involved in civil engineering [5, 6] (e.g. buildings, bridges or transmission towers), material science [7, 8] (e.g. carbon nanotubes, graphitic materials), and other applications [9–۱۱]. The fnite element method (FEM) is one of most popular methods to calculate dynamic behaviors of truss structures due to its convenience of intuitionist result. However, the FEM requires a signifcant amount of computing capacity for the large truss structures and the results cannot be applied efectively for the vibration controller design, especially, it is difcult to comprehend and grasp the essential nonlinear dynamic characteristics when the nonlinear analysis needs to be carried out. Therefore, the equivalent continuum modeling techniques are becoming increasingly promising in practical engineering felds [12, 13]. The equivalent continuum modeling approaches, their advantages, the development and future directions were summarized in Ref. [14]. The equivalent continuum modeling possesses three promising advantages, as follows:

Conclusions

     The spacecraft and civil engineering structures are developing towards to the directions of large-size, light-weight and fexibility, which motivates the studies about the equivalent dynamic modeling of the large space truss structures. In this survey, the status of the equivalent continuum modeling on the truss structures is frstly presented. Then, the equivalent continuum modeling work for linear truss systems is described, together with diferent modeling approaches, structural styles and connection joint. In addition, the solution methods and experimental studies are also discussed. Afterwards, the equivalent continuum modeling of nonlinear truss systems is investigated and classifed into geometrical, material and jointed nonlinearities. The vibration control researches involving the truss structures and their equivalent continuum models are performed, which are analyzed to have great potential and advantages of applications in large truss structures. Further research eforts, e.g. equivalent nonlinear modeling strategy for truss structures, solving approach of coupled three-dimensional nonlinear model, active vibration control of space trusses, as well as dynamic analysis and vibration control of fexible spacecraft with truss structures, are put forward for reference.