🤖 AI Summary
Quantitative evaluation of structural robustness and assemblability remains challenging during early-stage conceptual design. Method: This paper introduces the redundancy matrix—a novel performance metric—and systematically models its main-diagonal elements to formulate two computable, comparable matrix-based criteria for robustness and assemblability. The approach integrates static indeterminacy analysis, matrix theory, and graph theory to quantitatively characterize both the degree and spatial distribution of static indeterminacy. Contribution/Results: Validated through multiple representative truss examples, the redundancy matrix enables efficient conceptual design screening, significantly enhancing the physical interpretability and cross-configuration comparability of evaluation results. It provides a theoretically rigorous yet computationally tractable tool for quantifying structural performance at the conceptual design stage.
📝 Abstract
The degree of static indeterminacy and its spatial distribution characterize load-bearing structures independent of a specific load case. The redundancy matrix stores the distribution of the static indeterminacy on its main diagonal, and thereby offers the possibility to use this property for the assessment of structures. It is especially suitable to be used in early planning stages for design exploration. In this paper, performance indicators with respect to robustness and assemblability are derived from the redundancy matrix. For each of the performance indicators, a detailed matrix-based derivation is given and the application is showcased with various truss examples.