Truss structures

Truss structures are used in many applications and they are a good way to make a structure strong, without using that much material. A truss simply can be seen as a connection of long and slender members connected in joints, that are seen as pin joints such that the members can freely rotate about this joint.

Example

In figure 1 a schematic truss is shown of a small bridge. On the left side, the bridge is connected to a so called pinned support and the bridge is connected using a rolling support on the right side, these different supports are important further on when calculating the internal forces. Each member in a truss is either in tension or compression or it could be a zero-force member which means that the member does not contribute to the distribution of forces in the structure. These members however are sometimes still used to bring stability to the structure.

Figure 1. Schematic visualisation of a bridge made of a truss structure