A peridynamic model for the nonlinear static analysis of truss and tensegrity structures

A peridynamic model is developed in this paper for the nonlinear static analysis of truss and tensegrity structures. In the present model, the motion equations of material points are established on the current configuration and the pairwise forces are functions of extension and direction of the bonds. The peridynamic parameters are obtained based on the equivalence between the strain energy densities of the peridynamic and classical continuum models. The present model is applied to the mechanical analysis of bimodular truss and tensegrity structures, in which the compressive modulus is set to be zero for the cables. Several representative examples are carried out and the results verify the validity and efficiency of the developed model by comparing with the conventional nonlinear finite element method.