Failure Mode Analysis and Performance Optimization of the Hierarchical Corrugated Truss Structure

Abstract

The theories of elastic plates and Kirchhoff's sandwich plates are used to analyze the failure modes of the second order hierarchical corrugated truss structure, and a plate model is presented. Besides the six competing failure modes obtained in the literature using the elementary elastic beam theory, another five competing failure modes have been identified herein, including the plate buckling, infinitely wide plate buckling, sandwich plate buckling, infinitely wide sandwich plate buckling, and surface wrinkling. Expressions for the compressive collapse strengths of these modes are derived and used to construct collapse mechanism maps for second order trusses, which is effective for selecting the geometries of second order trusses. By comparing with the result of the finite element method (FEM) it is shown that the plate model has higher accuracy than the beam model, and the infinite wide plate model has the highest accuracy when the length-width ratio of the large struts is greater than 1.0. Finally, three optimization models are proposed. The performance of a second order hierarchical corrugated truss structure has been optimized, and the geometric parameters under the optimal performance can be obtained, which can provide a more convenient way to achieve a desired scheme for designers.