FAIRING AND CONFIGURATION OPTIMIZATION METHOD OF FREE-FORM SPACE GRID STRUCTURES BASED ON ENERGY METHOD

The thorough study on the fairing and configuration optimization of free-form space grid structures is presented. Combined with mapping technology of bicubic quasi-uniform B-spline surfaces, the energy method is introduced to smooth free-form space grid structures through a fairing factor adjustment, and the effects of a fairing factor on morphological characteristics of a grid structure are investigated. On this basis, the fairing factor is set as the design variable, and the multi-objective optimum function, whose objective variables are the quality factor of a grid form, the tolerance of elements length, and the characteristic of Gaussian curvature, is proposed. The optimum configuration of a space grid structure is finally achieved from the solution of a multi-objective optimum function, and the nature of the optimum process is interpreted by the solution space. The analyses of several free-form surface grid structures verify the practicality and reliability of the method discussed in the paper.