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An Application of Load Path
Theory to the Design of Structures
by
Ashkan Bassandeh
A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of
Master of Engineering
School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
The University of New South Wales
Sydney, Australia
August 2012
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knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another
person, or substantial proportions of material which have been accepted for
the award of any other degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational
institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any
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ABSTRACT
This thesis investigates the application of load path algorithms to define
trajectories for placement of reinforcing fibres in membrane tension structures.
Load paths can define how a structure performs its intended load carrying
function transferring loads from a point of application to a point of reaction. In
recent years, a novel method to compute these paths has emerged in the
literature using finite element analysis yet common FEA packages do not have
options to generate these paths. Therefore load path generation needs to be
performed by integration of an external numerical computing environment (i.e.
MATLAB or FORTRAN).
In this thesis a method of visualizing of load paths in membrane structures has
been achieved by overlaying of link and shell elements in the commercial finite
element program ANSYS. The method is based on equilibrium of nodal forces
and starts with consideration of trusses. Load flow is identified by removing
elements from an over populated model using an evolutionary method. The
design procedure is iterated for a number of loops by slowly deactivating
inefficient elements by a scalar criterion in ANSYS programming language. The
integrity of this design technique is verified by analyzing number of models
(trusses and shells).
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The work is then extended to membrane structures. Static structural analysis
using finite element geometric nonlinear analysis due to the large deflection is
conducted for a rectangle membrane under uniform pressure. Shell and link
elements in the model represent the main cloth and possible carbon fibre paths
respectively. By introducing the procedure of elimination, two diagonal straps of
link elements bridging the corners remained in the corner fixed structure. The
final application of this research is cruising boat sails which are analyzed with
the proposed nonlinear programming formulation. The results from this work are
compared to the patterns in existing sails.
Finally, this work concludes that defining load paths using overlaid link and shell
elements for reinforcement of the structure can provide qualitative information
on the trajectories followed by load in structures and it can predict trajectories
for reinforcing carbon fibre paths. This thesis has focused on developing the
numerical algorithms. A deeper investigation of manufacturing methods and
collaboration with manufacturers of shade structures or yacht sails is
recommended as future work.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are a number of people without whom this thesis might not have been
written, and to whom I am greatly indebted. My gratitude firstly goes to my
supervisor, Dr Garth Pearce for his inspiration, and his great efforts to explain
things clearly and simply. Throughout my thesis-writing period, he provided
encouragement, sound advice, good teaching, immense knowledge and lots of
good ideas.
My heartful thanks go to my co. supervisor Emeritus Professor Don Kelly for the
wonderful level of guidance I received throughout this thesis. He has always
provided tireless support and advice across all aspect of the project and has
invaluable source of knowledge and inspiration both professionally and
personally.
I would like to express my gratitude to Associate Professor Carl Reidsema for
the insight on the initiation of this work.
My sincere thanks also go to Ravi Shankar for his help and supports and for the
many discussions we have had over a year on static analysis and also to Ehsan
Chavoshi from IRANSYS who has provided me many insights on the modelling
of membrane structures.
My final and most sincere thanks go to my family, Sedighe and Baraatali who
have provided me the wherewithal to endure these two years of graduate
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school and have shared their love and advice with me in all the time constantly.
To my sister, Mojgan and her lovely husband, Mehrab, I thank them for their
wonderful support not only during this research but also over my entire life
being far from home country. To my sister, Mandana, who has always widened
my vision to the life and given me hope.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract ............................................................................................................................ iv
Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................ vi
Table of Contents ...........................................................................................................viii
list of Figures ................................................................................................................... xi
list of tables ..................................................................................................................... xv
Abbreviations and Acronyms ......................................................................................... xvi
Nomenclature ................................................................................................................ xvii
CHAPTER 1. .................................................................................................................... 1
1.1. Thesis background ........................................................................................................ 1
1.2. Thesis objective ............................................................................................................ 4
1.3. Thesis outline ................................................................................................................ 4
1.4. Research papers ............................................................................................................ 6
CHAPTER 2. .................................................................................................................... 7
2.1. Introduction ................................................................................................................... 7
2.2. Load path ...................................................................................................................... 8
2.3. Implementation of load paths ...................................................................................... 16
2.4. Structural Optimization:.............................................................................................. 20
2.4.1. Structural Optimization method .......................................................................... 21
2.4.2. History of structural optimization ....................................................................... 24
2.4.3. Techniques of topological optimization .............................................................. 25
2.5. Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 33
CHAPTER 3. .................................................................................................................. 35
3.1. Introduction ................................................................................................................. 35
3.2. Using load path to determine force transfer within the solution boundaries............... 37
3.2.1. Load path method clarification: .......................................................................... 41
3.2.2. Load path vector: ................................................................................................ 41
3.2.3. Load path integration: ......................................................................................... 47
3.2.4. Cantilever plate example:.................................................................................... 50
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3.2.5. Example of an L-Shape structure: ....................................................................... 53
3.2.6. Properties of the paths ......................................................................................... 56
3.2.7. Structural configuration ...................................................................................... 62
3.2.8. Discussion ........................................................................................................... 63
3.3. Exploration of load paths in trusses ............................................................................ 63
3.3.1. Gradual reduction based on force level ............................................................... 64
3.3.2. Example of a one bay truss ................................................................................. 69
3.3.3. Example of a two bay truss: ................................................................................ 71
3.3.4. Example of a multi-bay truss .............................................................................. 76
3.3.5. Discussion ........................................................................................................... 78
3.4. Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 79
CHAPTER 4. .................................................................................................................. 81
4.1. Introduction: ................................................................................................................ 81
4.2. Theory of shells and plates: ........................................................................................ 84
4.2.1. General concept................................................................................................... 84
4.3. Modelling of a clamped circular plate: ....................................................................... 86
4.3.1. Material characteristics ....................................................................................... 87
4.3.2. Element ............................................................................................................... 87
4.3.3. Boundary conditions, and loading ...................................................................... 89
4.3.4. The solution ........................................................................................................ 91
4.3.5. Post processing.................................................................................................... 92
4.4. Overlaying meshing method ....................................................................................... 94
4.5. Modelling of a clamped rectangle model:................................................................... 95
4.5.1. Material characteristics ....................................................................................... 96
4.5.2. Element ............................................................................................................... 96
4.5.3. Boundary conditions and loading ....................................................................... 98
4.5.4. The solution ........................................................................................................ 99
4.5.5. Post processing without overlaying link elements ............................................ 100
4.5.6. Post processing with overlaying link elements ................................................. 101
4.5.7. Determining the load paths ............................................................................... 103
4.6. Modelling of a corner fixed rectangle model: ........................................................... 105
4.6.1. Material characteristics ..................................................................................... 106
4.6.2. Element ............................................................................................................. 106
4.6.3. Boundary conditions, and loading .................................................................... 107
4.6.4. Determining the load paths ............................................................................... 108
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4.7. Conclusion: ............................................................................................................... 109
CHAPTER 5. ................................................................................................................ 111
5.1. Introduction: .............................................................................................................. 111
5.2. Sail as a membrane structure .................................................................................... 112
5.3. Finite element model of the sail ................................................................................ 113
5.3.1. Definition of the geometry ................................................................................ 113
5.3.2. Material characteristics ..................................................................................... 115
5.3.3. Element ............................................................................................................. 116
5.3.4. Boundary conditions, and loading .................................................................... 118
5.3.5. Results and Post processing .............................................................................. 122
5.4. Load path determination ........................................................................................... 123
5.4.1. Overlaid elements ............................................................................................. 123
5.4.2. Effect of boundary conditions on load paths determination ............................. 127
5.5. Conclusion: ............................................................................................................... 139
CHAPTER 6. ................................................................................................................ 140
6.1. Summary of findings................................................................................................. 140
6.2. Recommendations for Future Work .......................................................................... 143
References ..................................................................................................................... 145
APPENDIX.A……………….…………………...………………………………….….......…151
APPENDIX.B……………….…………………...………………………………….……....…160
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 2-1: Load path in a pinned connection (Kelly and Tosh, 2000) ............................ 9
Figure 2-2: Principal stress directions (Kelly and Tosh, 2000) ...................................... 11
Figure 2-3: Zero force components in the 𝑥 direction on a load path wall (Kelly and
Tosh, 2000) ..................................................................................................................... 12
Figure 2-4: Load path in a plate with a hole under tension in 𝑥 direction (a) and 𝑦
direction (b) (Kelly and Tosh, 2000)............................................................................... 13
Figure 2-5: Michell structure for a cantilevered beam(Chan, 1963) ............................... 16
Figure 2-6: Fibre steering patterns (Crosky et al., 2006) ................................................ 17
Figure 2-7: Test for straightening of load path (Kelly et al., 2010) ................................ 18
Figure 2-8: Transferred force to a node for 3D truss (Harasaki and Arora, 2001) ......... 19
Figure 2-9 Typical size optimized structure in initial given structure (a) and final
optimized design (b)(Christensen and Klarbring, 2008) ................................................. 22
Figure 2-10: Typical shape optimized structure (Christensen and Klarbring, 2008) ...... 22
Figure 2-11: Two dimensional optimization (Christensen and Klarbring, 2008) ........... 23
Figure 2-12: Topology optimization of a two bay truss (Harasaki, 2000) ...................... 24
Figure 2-13: Design domain (Querin et al., 1998; Huang and Xie, 2011) ...................... 28
Figure 2-14: Topology optimized design with BESO (Huang and Xie, 2011) ............... 29
Figure 2-15: Continuum structure Model (Harasaki 2004)............................................. 30
Figure 3-1: Load transfer in a pinned joint(Kelly and Tosh, 2000) ................................ 38
Figure 3-2: Reinforcing fibres in a yacht sail (Wightsails, 2012) ................................... 39
Figure 3-3: Major principal stress trajectories ................................................................ 40
Figure 3-4: Minor principal stress trajectories ................................................................ 40
Figure 3-5: Schematic of force "stream tube" ................................................................. 42

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Figure 3-6: Stress transformation to an arbitrary coordinate system .............................. 43
Figure 3-7: sample pointing vector at the solid element centre ...................................... 49
Figure 3-8: Cantilever block boundary condition ........................................................... 51
Figure 3-9: Load path in 𝑥 direction ............................................................................... 52
Figure 3-10: Load path in 𝑦 direction ............................................................................. 53
Figure 3-11: L-Shape structure boundary condition ....................................................... 54
Figure 3-12: 𝑦 direction load paths ................................................................................. 55
Figure 3-13: 𝑥 direction load paths ................................................................................. 55
Figure 3-14: Simple tension x-paths ............................................................................... 57
Figure 3-15: Simple compression x-paths ...................................................................... 57
Figure 3-16: Bending stress ............................................................................................ 58
Figure 3-17: Pure bending scenario ................................................................................ 58
Figure 3-18: Cantilever bending load picture ................................................................. 59
Figure 3-19: Force equilibrium in 𝑥 direction................................................................. 59
Figure 3-20: Simply supported beam .............................................................................. 60
Figure 3-21: Geometry discontinuity effect on load paths.............................................. 61
Figure 3-22: Interpretation of curved paths .................................................................... 61
Figure 3-23: Structural configuration(Kelly et al., 2010) ............................................... 62
Figure 3-24: sample section of a multi bay truss ............................................................ 66
Figure 3-25: 𝑥-force transfer ........................................................................................... 67
Figure 3-26: 𝑥-force transfer ........................................................................................... 68
Figure 3-27: 𝑦-force transfer ........................................................................................... 68
Figure 3-28: One bay truss example ............................................................................... 69
Figure 3-29: Final design after 4 iterations. .................................................................... 70
Figure 3-30: Reduction process for the one bay truss ..................................................... 71
Figure 3-31: Two bays model ......................................................................................... 72
Figure 3-32: The reduction process of the two bay truss ................................................ 73
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Figure 3-33: Clarification of force equilibrium in node 4............................................... 75
Figure 3-34: Multi-bay truss with regular meshing pattern ............................................ 77
Figure 3-35: Multi-bay truss with overpopulation meshing pattern ............................... 77
Figure 3-36: Final design for the multiple bay structure ................................................ 78
Figure 3-37: Total weight analysis .................................................................................. 78
Figure 4-1: Static condition of equilibrium in a shell ..................................................... 85
Figure 4-2: Shell elements distribution ........................................................................... 88
Figure 4-3: Clamped circle.............................................................................................. 89
Figure 4-4: Point load in the centre and enforced displacement in the edge .................. 90
Figure 4-5: Pressure ramping function............................................................................ 91
Figure 4-6: Z deflection .................................................................................................. 92
Figure 4-7: Von Mises stress .......................................................................................... 93
Figure 4-8: Overlaying of Link181 and Shell181 elements ............................................ 95
Figure 4-9: Shell element size convergence for the rectangle plate................................ 97
Figure 4-10: Shell elements distribution ......................................................................... 97
Figure 4-11: Link element distribution ........................................................................... 98
Figure 4-12: Rectangle boundary condition .................................................................... 99
Figure 4-13: Z deflection .............................................................................................. 100
Figure 4-14: Von Mises stress....................................................................................... 101
Figure 4-15: Z deflection .............................................................................................. 102
Figure 4-16: Von Mises stress....................................................................................... 102
Figure 4-17: load path distribution in the plate ............................................................. 104
Figure 4-18: load path for a masonry dome (O’Dwyer, 1999) ..................................... 105
Figure 4-19: Link elements distribution........................................................................ 106
Figure 4-20: Node distribution ...................................................................................... 107
Figure 4-21: Possible load path in the corner fixed rectangle ....................................... 108
Figure 4-22: Alternative load paths for a groined vault (O’Dwyer, 1999) ................... 109
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Figure 5-1: Components of a boat sail, adopted from (Jazzmanian, 2006) .................. 114
Figure 5-2: Meshing configuration ............................................................................... 117
Figure 5-3: 𝑧 displacement against number of division ................................................ 117
Figure 5-4: Analysis time against number of divisions ................................................ 118
Figure 5-5: General boundary condition procedure ...................................................... 119
Figure 5-6: stiffening of the sail .................................................................................... 120
Figure 5-7: Pressure ramping graph .............................................................................. 121
Figure 5-8: 𝑧 deflection ................................................................................................. 123
Figure 5-9: Overlaid link 180 elements ........................................................................ 124
Figure 5-10: overlaying of link and shell elements....................................................... 124
Figure 5-11: Link elements remaining after the 50 iterations ....................................... 125
Figure 5-12: layouts for mainsails (Fallow, 1996) ........................................................ 126
Figure 5-13: Shell element distribution ........................................................................ 127
Figure 5-14: visualization of batten .............................................................................. 128
Figure 5-15: 𝑧 displacement contours ........................................................................... 129
Figure 5-16: (a) Mesh generation and boundary conditions (b) Load paths defined by
the link removal algorithm. ........................................................................................... 130
Figure 5-17: Model with over populated links. ............................................................. 131
Figure 5-18: load path with force in the head ............................................................... 132
Figure 5-19: load path with force in the head and clew ................................................ 133
Figure 5-20: Shrouds in the sail (McDoon, 2004) ........................................................ 134
Figure 5-21: Shrouds location ....................................................................................... 135
Figure 5-22: cable reaction with identical magnitude ................................................... 136
Figure 5-23: cable reaction with different magnitude ................................................... 137
Figure 5-24: Boundary conditions ................................................................................ 138
Figure 5-25: Final possible load paths .......................................................................... 138
Figure 6-1: 𝑦-Force load path in a simple truss. ........................................................... 143
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LIST OF TABLES
Table 3-1: Summary of the force .................................................................................... 67
Table 3-2: Axial force based reduction ........................................................................... 74
Table 4-1: Circular element size ..................................................................................... 89
Table 5-1: Some common materials used for sails ....................................................... 115
Table 5-2: Summary of boundary conditions................................................................ 128
Table 5-3: Reactions and shrouds forces ...................................................................... 134
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ABBREVIATIONS AND
ACRONYMS
Term Definition
1D, 2D, 3D One Dimensional, Two Dimensional, Three

Dimensional
APDL ANSYS Parametric Design Language
BESO Bi-direction Evolutionary Structural optimization
CAD Computer Aided Design
CAE Computer Aided Engineering
CPU Central processing unit
DOF Degree of freedom
EM Evolutionary method
ESO Evolutionary Structural Optimization
FEA Finite Element Analysis
FEM Finite Element Method
FEM Finite Element Modeller
RAM Random access memory
SIMP Solid Isotropic Material with Penalization
TF Transferred force
WP Woven Polyester
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NOMENCLATURE
Term Definition
Celsius
𝐴 Area, Cross section area
𝑎 Radius
𝐸 Young’s modulus
𝐸𝑅 Evolutionary rate
𝐸 Scalar field
𝑒 Element
𝐹 Force
𝐹 Transferred force criterion
Internal Force
h Thickness
𝐼 Load flow
Unit vector
𝑗 Unit vector
𝐿 Length
𝑁 Node
𝑃 Tension force load

𝑃 Arbitrary point
𝑞 Pressure
𝑅𝑅 Rejection Ratio
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𝑠 Increment value
Load path contribution scalar
Developed Load path contribution scalar
𝑢 Elastic energy flow
𝑉 Pointing vector
Velocity
𝑤 Deflection
𝑥 X direction
𝑦 Y direction
𝑧 Z direction
Normal stress
𝑗,̅ 𝑗 Principal stress
𝑒 Local stress
Maximum global stress
Shear stress
Change
Removal ratio
 Boundary condition
 Solution Domain
Poisson’s ratio
Air density
Velocity
, , , Angle
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CHAPTER 1.
INTRODUCTION
1.1. Thesis background
“Load paths” define how a structure is performing its intended function of
transferring loads from a point of application to a point of reaction. The term is
often used in conjunction with structural analysis and design since the
identification of the paths gives insight to assess the overall integrity of a
structure. In particular when supports or joints cause a concentration of the
load, the identification of the load flow from the structure to the support aids to
define the required reinforcement to maintain the structural integrity.
Investigation of the load path in a structural design also broadens the vision of
the designers to anticipate how a load flow will be altered if the structure is
damaged.
A review of the literature however reveals that historically there has been no
mathematical definition of load paths and so commercial finite element systems

Chapter1Introduction
do not include plotting of the paths in their post-processing. For structural
components such as a joint subject to a single axial load, the force results can
be followed from one component to the next. In texts such as (Flabel, 1997) the
insight gained is used to warn of bending introduced by offset of the loads from
the original line of action. A related method recommended by (Zienkiewicz et
al., 1969) is to use the stress flow directly to predict and interpret the load
paths. Principal stress vectors can give some qualitative information but plots of
the principal stress in a structure do not identify the path for transfer of a shear
load (Kelly and Elsley, 1993).
Various approaches have been developed for more complex structural
assemblies. Simplified beam and frame finite element models allow force
resultants to be followed through the structure. Loads can also be evaluated on
sections cut across the structure and the load transfer can be followed manually
by the designer reviewing the results. However, all these methods are labour
intensive and rely on the designer’s skill to create the models and interpret the
stress fields. As a result, it is hard to find two methods that give similar
characterization and interpretation of the load paths.
Recently, attempts have been made to develop a mathematical framework for
defining load paths (Ullman, 1992; Kelly et al., 2001; Waldman et al., 2002).
From these concepts load paths can be mapped based on equilibrium on a
segment of the path between the components of shear stress and normal
stress. This theory is able to calculate the local orientation using finite element
analysis (FEA) and to plot the trajectories in a post processing environment
such as ANSYS or TecPlot.
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The aim of this thesis is to investigate the application of load paths to identify
trajectories for reinforcement in tension structures such as the shade sails and
wind sails. These structures are typically made from cloth that creates a large
surface to shade an area from the sun or harness pressure from the wind. Both
applications have local supports to which forces must be drawn from the global
structure. This means the fabric of the surface needs to be locally thickened to
withstand the locally increased load, or reinforced by tape or fibres attached to
the membrane. In high performance applications, such as racing boat sails,
carbon fibre is the preferred reinforcing material due to its high stiffness and
strength. Part of this thesis will therefore focus on fibre reinforcement of these
structures.
The first step in this research is to develop method to utilise the results of a
finite element analysis to define the fibre trajectories. In the early stages of this
research, procedures are developed to extend the previous methods for
continuum solids and plates to allow load paths to be followed through truss
structures. It is evident that these procedures could be applied to defining the
paths on the membrane structures if a reinforcing net is overlayed on the
membrane and the fibres represented by axial force elements. The aim of the
work is to define the development of this methodology using the commercial
finite element program ANSYS.
The application to shade and wind sail structures is set as the goal to define the
structural complexity. Because the procedures developed for the truss
structures are dependent on the topology of the truss, the algorithm to find the
paths has to modify the topology. As a result an algorithm similar to an
evolutionary design procedure (Xie and Steven, 1997) is set up. Relative nodal
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positions remain unchanged in the algorithm and topology evolves by
elimination of members carrying the smallest loads from an initial overpopulated
structure. The aim of the algorithm is to provide a topology that follows the
dominate paths rather than optimise the structure.
1.2. Thesis objective
This work therefore aims to determine the load path in tension structures under
static loading conditions through geometric non-linear analysis by implementing
an iterative evolutionary method. The objectives of this thesis are:
 Investigation of load paths by implementing the available load flow

method into the finite element package ANSYS.
 Visualisation of load path in membrane structures by an iterative

numerical algorithm through overlaying link and shell elements in
ANSYS.
 Determination of possible trajectories for fibre reinforcement in shade

and wind sail structures by the proposed method.
1.3. Thesis outline
The outline of the remaining chapters of the thesis is given in this section.
Chapter 2 provides an overview of the available methods to identify load paths
and describes how these methods have been developed and implemented in
order to anticipate structural performance under loading conditions. It reviews
the available literature in the area of the current study on this topic and
introduces shade and wind sails.
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In Chapter 3, the method proposed earlier by (Kelly et al., 2010) is described
and integrated into ANSYS. ANSYS is selected because it is the main FEA
package utilized for teaching and research at the University of New South
Wales. This integration is performed by the development of FORTRAN codes.
Once the analysis is performed stress resultants of the elements are exported
to the user defined codes and the load path vectors are generated for plotting.
Link elements are created and imported back into ANSYS. The links enable the
vectors to be visualized by plotting the finite element mesh without requiring the
algorithm to provide a contour plot capability. This chapter then extends the
load path algorithm to truss structures in preparation for the work on
membranes.
In Chapter 4, an overlaying meshing method consisting of two node truss
element and four node shell element is developed to define the load paths in
tension structures. Due to the large deflection of the membrane, geometric
nonlinear analysis is performed. As an approximation the sails are loaded by
uniform static pressure for the wind sail. Shell and link elements in the model
represent the main cloth and possible carbon fibre paths respectively.
In Chapter 5, an attempt is made to find the possible carbon fibre paths to
reinforce cruising boat sails using the overlaying method and structural
evolutionary elimination. The model is analysed under different boundary
conditions using over population of the link elements and then the algorithm of
elimination is used to reduce the fibre paths to a pattern that is feasible.
Chapter 6 concludes this project and provides recommendations for future
work.
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1.4. Research papers
The following research papers included contributions from my research.
 Kelly, D., Reidsema, C., Bassandeh, A., Pearce, G. and Lee, M. (2011).
"On interpreting load paths and identifying a load bearing topology from
finite element analysis." Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 47(8):
867-876.
 Kelly, D., Pearce, G., Ip, M. and Bassandeh, A. (2011). Plotting load
paths from vectors of finite element stress results. NAFEMS, Boston
The following paper being prepared for the ICCM2012 conference summarises
the work in this thesis.
 Bassandeh, A., Pearce, G. and Kelly, D. (2012). Identifying load paths

from finite element analysis with application to reinforcement of
membrane structures. 4th International Conference on Computational
Methods Gold Coast, Australia.
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CHAPTER 2.
LITERATURE SURVEY
2.1. Introduction
This literature survey aims to review how load paths and the application of load
paths to topology optimization in structural design have developed by reviewing
the history and the evolution of the load path theory. An attempt is also made to
review techniques that have been developed for the visualisation of load paths
in a structure. This literature review does not aim to be an exhaustive literature
survey that cites all references relating to the concept of load path. However, it
does aim to identify the current status of the load path method as a useful
means for a better understanding of the performance of a design. It will also
give an overview of some common methodologies for topological optimization
and some benefits and drawbacks of these methods.

Chapter2Background Theory
2.2. Load path
Load paths are used to identify the flow of a force from the application point to
the reaction point in the solution domain. Engineers have been able to visualize
how a load is transferred from its application point to the support and have
developed a number of techniques to define the load paths. Different methods
have been derived and various visualizations and interpretations have been
defined. However, in spite of all these attempts and conducted studies, there
has been no unified approach to quantify, characterize, and visualize precisely
the load paths in the structure. In addition, none of these methodologies have
defined a general acceptable procedure for calculation of these paths to show
how remote loads are equilibrated in the structure. There is therefore no
thorough insight into how a structure is performing its intended load carrying
functions.
Load paths in structural design have been studied over the last five decades. In
two studies, load paths in airplane structures were investigated by Kermode
and Osgood (Kermode, 1964; Osgood, 1970; Osgood, 1982) however, a clear
method for visualization was not defined by these engineers. The concept of
force flows was further introduced by French (French, 1992) as “A very helpful
abstraction” since he reported these flows could be used to minimize stress
concentration in spite of having no physical importance. This author also
emphasized that making the paths as straight lines can minimize bending. This
creates inefficient load transfer and he proposed a mathematical equation to
explain the problem. Later Juvinall in 1991 reviewed force flows or “load paths”
for “line of forces” in a pin loaded structure under tension (Juvinall and Marshek,
Page | 8
1991) however, the finding did not have mathematical basis. Figure 2-1 depicts
the load path in a pinned connection structure (Kelly and Tosh, 2000):
Figure ‎2-1: Load path in a pinned connection (Kelly and Tosh, 2000)
Here Fxa and Fxb represent the tension force in x axis. A similar approach was
developed by Ullman that connected fluid mechanics and structural force
transfers, using force flow visualization technique (Ullman, 1992). In the
conducted study, forces were treated as fluids and it was concluded that
transition of a tensile load into a compressive load must be accomplished
through shear (Ullman, 1992). This method was employed in another work to
minimize the stress concentration (Budynas, 1977) and later, the concept of
load flow was discussed by (Singh, 1996) where the force transfer through a
structure occurs as “flux”. The “load path” of a force that flows through a
structure can be sketched by following set of “Rules of thumb” which were
established by (Signorini et al., 1990):
 Load lines originate and terminate on load and reaction boundaries

respectively
 In uniform loading, load lines spread as evenly as possible and can

cover the whole structure
 Load lines never cross over each other
Page | 9
 Load lines may diverge by no more than 35 degree around geometric

discontinuities such as holes
 Any curvature of the load lines represents shear and the creation of
bending moments in structures
A mathematical definition that describes load paths in a structure is needed to
use load paths as an essential criteria in the design of a structure and its
optimization. There have been several studies to mathematically define and
identify load paths. The first successful study of how to plot load path
trajectories in a continuum based on finite element solutions was addressed by
Kelly and Tosh (Kelly and Tosh, 2000) and it was later implemented and further
discussed in a typical aircraft structure by Kelly 2001 (Kelly et al., 2001). Some
insight for a load path through a continuum structure can be obtained from
principal stress vectors for a simple tension or compression load. Principal
stress vectors are the vectors aligned with the maximum stress contours and
can be found from the post processing from the available commercial finite
element packages in the market. However principal stress vectors do not align
with the direction of transfer of shear loads and a more general technique has
to be developed.
From the theory of elasticity, in plane normal stress and the shearing
stress acting at a point on an arbitrary plane with orientation angle of
with 𝑥 axis, can be derived from Equation 2-1 & Equation 2-2 (Boresi et al.,
2010):
𝑠 𝑠 𝑠 𝑠 Equation ‎2-1
Page | 10
𝑠 𝑠 𝑠 𝑠 Equation ‎2-2
Equating the shear stress to zero delivers the principal direction which is
expressed as (Equation 2-3):
𝑎 Equation ‎2-3
From this definition, the stress paths or stress trajectories are defined as the
lines parallel to the maximum normal stress vectors with the angle of ,
Figure 2-2, and can reflect reasonable paths if either the shear stress
magnitude is negligible or there is no shear in the solution domain (Kelly and
Tosh, 2000). The load path is correct to the left and beside the hole but does
not visualize the transfer of the force to a bearing load behind the hole.
‎ -2: Principal stress directions (Kelly and Tosh, 2000)

Figure 2
The idea of visualization of load flow in the structures which was introduced
initially by Kelly and Tosh (Kelly and Tosh, 2000) and was comprehensively
reviewed later (Kelly et al., 2010) indicate that the flows of loads can define
paths along which, loads remain constant as they traverse the solution domain.
Although stress analysis does not obey the continuity law in the sense of fluid
flow, continuity can be applied to the components of the force in an arbitrary set
Page | 11
of orthogonal directions due to the equilibrium requirement. Figure 2-3
illustrates the equilibrium between force components in the 𝑥 direction on a load
path wall (Kelly and Tosh, 2000).
𝐹
𝐹
‎ -3: Zero force components in the 𝑥 direction on a load path wall (Kelly and Tosh, 2000)
Figure 2
Load paths define boundaries in such that no load contribution in the specified
direction is introduced across the boundaries of the path (Equation 2-4):
𝐹 𝐹 Equation ‎2-4
Accordingly, the equilibrium in any segment (along load path wall) is achieved
when the components of and in 𝑥 direction are cancelled out if the
following condition is satisfied (Equation 2-5):
𝑠 𝑠 Equation ‎2-5
where in Figure 2-3.
When the equation is resolved for 𝑦 direction, the equilibrium can be modified
as (Equation 2-6):
𝑠 𝑠 Equation ‎2-6
The theory of load paths to calculate load flow orientations using finite element
solutions was implemented by Kelly and Elsley (Kelly and Elsley, 1993) and
Waldman et al. (Waldman et al., 1999). Waldman applied this approach to a
Page | 12
series of benchmarks problems including non-optimal and optimal holes in
plates. This method was linked to elastic energy flow. Where the orientation
angle of the produced vectors can be expressed as (Equation 2-7):
𝑎 Equation ‎2-7
In finite element analysis (FEA), the vectors field can be evaluated at the centre
of each element. This procedure was found to be sensitive to the placement of
the constraints required to suppress rigid body motion but it could not explain
thoroughly the peak stress regions (Waldman et al., 1999).
From the definition of load path, the load trajectories can be mapped in two
different directions of 𝑥 and 𝑦. The paths obtained in 𝑥 direction and 𝑦 direction
could be called major and complementary, or minor, respectively. In fact load
path can be determined in the direction that designer desires. Figure 2-4
depicts the load paths in and 𝑦 directions in a plate with a hole under tension in
the 𝑥 direction.
(a) (b)
Figure ‎2-4: Load path in a plate with a hole under tension in 𝑥 direction (a) and 𝑦 direction (b) (Kelly
and Tosh, 2000)
Page | 13
In a study by Chaperon (Chaperon et al., 1998), load flow on product of stress
and displacement tensors were visualized based on elastic energy flow which is
expressed as (Equation 2-8):
Equation ‎2-8
where represents load flow in the structure and is the displacement tensor.
Load paths have been also focussed for structural optimization purposes. The
method proposed by Takahashi (Takahashi, 1986) on the concept of relative
stiffness and transferred load inside structures, was refined by (Harasaki and
Arora, 2001; Arora and Harasaki, 2004). The authors introduced new concepts
of transferred as well as potentially transferred forces from the loading point to
the support points in structures based on a general continuum model. They
explained how to compute numerically these forces through using some
examples to demonstrate how some structures could be re-designed based on
these key concepts. The concepts were also studied and implemented for
topology optimization in the work by (Harasaki and Arora, 2001; Harasaki and
Arora, 2002). This work was also continued by Wang (Wang et al., 2010)
measuring the transferred force in rivets and gussets on joints of truck frames.
The advantages and drawbacks of web-connected joints that could not be
explained by stress distribution were also addressed in this work.
The concept of load transfer in vehicles structures (passengers cabins) was
expressed in another method proposed by Shinobu et al. (Shinobu et al., 1995)
based on introducing a scalar field 𝐸 . This term explains the degree of
connection between a loading point and an arbitrary point in the structure
Page | 14
according to the concept of relative stiffness. From several experiments in an
actual vehicle, the distribution of 𝐸 was measured by obtaining the load transfer
from the rear suspension to the front. It was concluded that the load transfer
initiated from rear did not coincide with the load transfer initiated from the front
under torsional loading. This concept was developed to tailor stiffness to reduce
vibration in the automotive structures (Hoshino et al., 2003). The so called
method can only provide qualitative directions of the load flow and with no
ablility to trace any trajectories from the application point to the reaction point.
The significance of a domain can be plotted by the magnitude of the transferred
force. However, this does not show critical stress regions under loading of
tension or compression.
Further work by Hoshino (Hoshino et al., 2003), introduced a method to express
load path determination based on a scalar . This term could measure the
contribution of any point in transformation of load in the structure. To
calculate , the solution domain is initially loaded under an external force and
then the overall displacement is computed and the recorded displacement is
applied to the domain as an enforced displacement boundary condition. can
be obtained at any point in the structural domain by the following method. The
displacement degree of freedom at that point is fixed and then the problem is
solved for the other displacements at other points. The gradient of this scalar
field is defined as the stiffness lines and the steepest lines are considered as
the load path in the structure.
Page | 15
2.3. Implementation of load paths
Load paths can be incorporated into most design processes to aid the designer
to determine the transfer of load through a structure. Load path contours may
indicate the optimal fibre orientation in a fibre reinforced composite layup and
can also be applied to damage tolerance studies to illustrate the effect of
geometric defects. In the early twentieth century, Michell developed a theory for
the minimum material requirement to meet strength or stiffness criteria within
structures. This theory led to a series of trajectories that were fundamentally
similar to principal stress trajectories (Michell, 1904). This achievement was
quite significant and still has been employed as a benchmark by structural
designers. Figure 2-5 illustrates the Michell structure for a tip loaded
cantilevered beam.
Figure ‎2-5: Michell structure for a cantilevered beam(Chan, 1963)
An application of Michell structures to fibrous composites was provided by
(Richards and Chan, 1966) and was applied to composite materials. The
feasibility of using this theory was investigated later through numerical studies
in order to reduce stress concentration around discontinuities such as holes
(Lackman and Ault, 1967). Since implementation of principal stress trajectories
can reduce these stress concentrations by 25% in the pin-loaded hole cases
(Lackman and Ault, 1967), they have been employed this technique for fibre
Page | 16
steering in composites in a number of studies (Brandmaier, 1970; Cooper,
1972; Jones and Platts, 1998). The fibre steering was achieved by placing dry
fibre onto prepared fabric or resin film in a highly optimized laminate along the
stress trajectories obtained from FEA. At the most efficient joints (up to 25 % of
fibres are placed in load paths patterns) the fibres were placed in these
orientations. Inclusion of reinforcing layers of steered carbon or fibreglass tows
in carbon fibre or fibreglass laminates were also examined by (Li et al., 2006)
through a series of research programs.
The aforementioned technique was followed by methods using load paths to
reinforce composite structures with carbon fibre (Crosky et al., 2006).
Figure 2-6 shows a fibre steering pattern by this method. The authors could
achieve bearing strength improvement of 33 % when they placed the carbon
fibre along the load paths based on FEA analysis. It was found that the load
path method provided surplus reinforcement against net section failure.
Therefore, the efficiency of the carbon laminate was increased by two by
reducing the ratio of the joint width to the bolt hole diameter.
‎ -6: Fibre steering patterns (Crosky et al., 2006)

Figure 2
In a recent study by Kelly (Kelly et al., 2010), an algorithm was presented to
combine the pointing vectors in order to define a topology to carry the loads.
Based on the definition of load path considered by the authors, a vector plot of
Page | 17
stress components determined the load flow across the domain and a contour
plot tangent to these pointing vectors identified paths along which a component
of the load remained constant. Since stress is a second order tensor and is
defined on an orthogonal set of axes, the vector plots could define separate
paths for load transfer in each direction. The algorithm modified the modulus of
the material based on the magnitude of the load path pointing vector on each
element. The algorithm was able to straighten the path indicated in the left hand
image in Figure 2-7, reducing bending moments and giving the straight path in
the second image. The form of the path during the iteration is indicated in the
third image. The significance of the plots and feasibility of the algorithm were
revealed by implementing the related FORTRAN codes to a number of
examples such as bolted joint, racing car and yacht hull (Kelly et al., 2010).
Figure ‎2-7: Test for straightening of load path (Kelly et al., 2010)
An algorithm was also developed into sketching the topology of a structure from
plots of the load paths. Sketching topological optimization for the given structure
from load paths was a helpful achievement based on the definition of load flow
in the structures.
In 2001 a theory of transferred forces and potential transferred forces in the
structures was established by Harasaki and Arora (Harasaki and Arora, 2001).
They considered the forces in 1𝐷 spring system as well as 2𝐷 and 3𝐷 trusses
Page | 18
and also rectangle frames. The force transfer through the structure was
presented by “force transfer” diagrams. This was followed by redesigning the
structure. Figure 2-8 shows the transferred force to node 5 for 3D truss in the
conducted study. Where and are applied force at node 1 and 2.
𝑧
𝑦
‎ -8: Transferred force to a node for 3D truss (Harasaki and Arora, 2001)
Figure 2
This work revealed that the transferred force magnitude was different from the
force applied to the structures, though the models engaged were quite simple.
Some suggestions about re-designing of the structures were given that could be
extended for optimal design of structures. The structural optimization concept
was developed using nonlinear programming formulation and computational
method in order to obtain size and topology optimization. Indirect methods were
also found to deliver similar solutions for different starting designs and
consequently can be applicable to general structural optimization (Harasaki and
Arora, 2001).
Wang and others (Wang et al., 2010) presented load paths in a truck cab under
frontal collision. They extended the described parameter, , to a new
Page | 19
parameter which was a statically calculated term extracted from
deformation results of the crash simulation. The work identified predominant
load paths along the floor member. To perform linear analysis using , the
behaviour of truck compartment was calculated in dynamic analysis in an early
stage of collision using LS-DYNA and NASTRAN as the finite element package.
The new term allowed the authors to estimate the effect of newly designed
stiffeners in the cab which could convey the load from the wall surface of the
tunnel into the rear part of the cab leading to better performance of the structure
under frontal collision. The load paths presented in the study were quite
different to path reported by other methods from what was previously reported.
2.4. Structural Optimization:
As the engineering industry advances, optimization becomes more relevant to
the design problems across all the fields. In the current competitive international
market, the companies can only survive if they can present cost optimized
products with exceptionally innovative concepts. Due to the limited material
resources, environmental impact and technological competition, only the
methods that can fulfil and improve the quality and reliability (such as light
weight and high performance) below the certain cost limit should be used
(Christensen and Klarbring, 2008). To achieve this, a new era in computer
aided engineering (CAE) has emerged from the early 1950’s.
Structural Optimization aims to offer a tool to the engineers to determine
optimal designs for acceptable structural responses, deformation and
satisfactory stresses and the interactions of all structural components in a
Page | 20
product. The optimization of a geometry and topology of a structural layout has
a great impact on the performance of structures, while satisfying various design
constraints (Yang and Chuang, 1994). As this structural optimisation can offer
efficiency and reliability as well as shortened development cycle of a product in
CAE procedures in particular, it has become a multidisciplinary field of research
and has drawn the attention of many researchers. Structural Optimization, is
widely used in aerospace structures, damage tolerance philosophy in vehicles
(Haftka and Prasad, 1980) and yachts design (Payne, 2008).
The general trend in vehicle and aerospace design has been towards more
specialized and higher capacity structures. These developments have forced
the designer to supply designs with sufficient strength, weight and safety
(Haftka and Prasad, 1980). Thus, the objective of structural topology is
determination of optimal distribution of material (such as material density
distribution) within the design domain such that it minimizes the cost and meets
a series of constraint functions. (Bendsøe and Soares, 1993; Bendsoe, 1995).
Optimization is incorporated into numerical engineering for product
development. In many applications by means of discrete and efficient methods
such as FEM, an algorithm-based optimization is required to support the
calculation engineering and design phase. To achieve this, number of
techniques have been suggested (Yang and Chuang, 1994).
2.4.1. Structural Optimization method
Optimization is a mathematical discipline that concerns finding of minima and
maxima of functions subject to constraints and can be used to determine shape,
size and topology. In terms of size optimization, once sensitivity is known,

Page | 21
design modification is rather simple and the corresponding modification of the
finite element model is straight forward. In other words, size optimization is to
find the optimal design by changing the size variables such as the cross-
sectional dimensions of truss and frames or the thickness of plates. This is the
easiest and earliest approach to improve structural performance. An initial given
structure and final size optimized design have been shown in Figure 2-9(a) and
Figure 2-9(b), respectively.
(a) (b)
Figure ‎2-9 Typical size optimized structure in initial given structure (a) and final optimized design
(b)(Christensen and Klarbring, 2008)
Shape optimization is a useful tool for fast development of lightweight
conceptual designs of structures, and has been investigated for many years. It
has been enhanced extensively to a viable level and has been implemented in
CAE (Bendsøe and Kikuchi, 1988). Figure 2-10 indicates a typical shape
optimized structure which shows the shape optimization can be applied in
allowable shapes which have fixed topological properties.
‎ -10: Typical shape optimized structure (Christensen and Klarbring, 2008)

Figure 2
Page | 22
Compared to sizing, shape optimization is more complex and is mainly
performed on continuum structures by modifying the predetermined boundaries
to achieve the optimal design (Bakhtiary et al., 1996). Nevertheless, topology
optimization is a relatively new and fast growing area of structural mechanics
and can be more cost effective than shape optimization. Figure 2-11
demonstrates a two dimensional topology optimization of a block under point
load on the top flange.
Figure ‎2-11: Two dimensional optimization (Christensen and Klarbring, 2008)
Topology optimization for discrete structures, such as trusses and frames, is to
search for the optimal spatial order and connectivity of the bars compare to
topology optimization of continuum structures which is to obtain the best
location and geometries of cavities and holes in the design domains (Huang
and Xie, 2010). Figure 2-12 shows an example of topology optimization of a two
bay truss. Figure 2-12(a) and Figure 2-12(b) present the original domain and
resultant truss, correspondingly.
Page | 23
(a) (b)
Figure ‎2-12: Topology optimization of a two bay truss (Harasaki, 2000)
The area of topology optimization is challenging due to its complexity; the
numerical effort increases rapidly as the number of variables is increased. The
number of variables is typically between 5,000 and 100,000 (Bakhtiary et al.,
1996).
2.4.2. History of structural optimization
Structural optimization has been pointed out for more than 100 years; however
there was no significant progress for more than five decades since the initial
introduction of the idea. In fact the improvement started with investigating the
cantilever truss structures by (Prager, 1977) which was briefly discussed
previously in this literature review. By 1980, programming finite element codes
were used to gain a weight optimum design for a rail road car with stress and
displacement and buckling constraints. This study concluded that more
attention must be paid for buckling effects if non uniform design is considered
(Haftka and Prasad, 1980). In 1981, the procedures were extended to solid
plastic plates and several methods to optimize axisymmetric plates with design
criterion of minimum static compliance were investigated (Cheng and Olhoff,
1981).
Page | 24
2.4.3. Techniques of topological optimization
Different techniques have been used by engineers in the area of topological
optimization and among all, homogenization, Evolutionary, Direct and indirect
use of load path methods have been most common techniques in this area.
 Homogenization method:
One of the main approaches for structural design that considers variable
topologies is the method of homogenization. In this method the material model
with micro- scale voids is introduced and the topology optimization problem is
defined. Then by seeking the optimal porosity using the optimal and satisfactory
criteria, the final design would be achieved (Wang et al., 2003). This method
was further modified by (Bendsøe and Sigmund, 2003) and a different
technique was introduced which did not need re-meshing in the topology
optimization process (with material distribution) using an artificial composite
material having microscopic voids (Bendsøe and Kikuchi, 1988). This approach
was followed later by a number of other researchers (Sigmund and Petersson,
1998; Zhou et al., 2001).
Applicability of the homogenization method to overcome checker boarding in
the design was verified by Suzuki (Suzuki, 1991). This method was extended
later for multiple material layout problems (Bruggi, 2008). This area was also
studied on bicycle and floor beam problem (Haber et al., 1996) and was
formulated and examined in several different examples (Yang and Chuang,
1994). An algorithm called Solid Isotropic Material with Penalization (SIMP) for
solid isotropic microstructures with penalization for intermediate densities was
Page | 25
suggested in 1988 which was the starting point of the outstanding work by
(Duysinx and Bendsøe, 1998).
From the mathematical point of view the theory of homogenization is very
limited since this theory uses the asymptotic expansion and the assumption of
periodicity to substitute the differential equation with oscillating coefficient that
may vary slowly when the solution is close to the initial equation. Although this
method is valuable for composite materials, it may not yield the intended results
for the mathematical modelling of the structural design. It often generates a
design with pores in the material that make the structure not manufacturable
and numerical instabilities may also introduce ‘ non- Physical ‘ artefacts in the
results and thus make the design sensitive to variation under loading (Wang et
al., 2003).
 Evolutionary Method (EM):
A new era of optimization called Evolutionary Method (EM) was opened in 1993
(Xie and Steven, 1993). This method was simple for shape and layout
optimization which was called “Evolutionary Structural Optimization” (ESO) and
was based on the concept of gradual removal of the material to achieve an
optimal design. The method has been developed for various problems of the
structural optimization including stress concentration, frequency optimization
and stiffness constraints. The ESO method is used as an appropriate criterion
to assess the contribution of each element to the specified behaviour of the
structure and subsequently to remove some elements with the least contribution
(Huang and Xie, 2010). Additionally, this study was based on Von Mises stress
in which elements with the magnitude lower than a certain level (rejection ratio),
Page | 26
were removed. The ESO method was expanded later to more complicated and
multiple loaded cases employing different rejection ratio( RR ) for each iteration
of the optimization (Xie and Steven, 1993).
Due to the importance of stress constraints in the structures, researchers have
devoted their time to the stress constraint topology. Topology optimization of
trusses with stress and local constraints was investigated by (Ohsaki and
Katoh, 2005). A sequential integer programming method for stress constrained
topology optimization was also studied by (Svanberg and Werme, 2007). In
recent research, the algorithms proposed previously by (Xie and Steven, 1993)
have been implemented using SIMP and homogenization methods in order to
minimize the weight of structures with stress constraints (París et al., 2010).
The level of stress in any part of a structure can be determined by conducting
FEA. Low value of stress or strain in the structure would be reliable indicators
for inefficient material use. Ideally the stress in the entire structure should have
even margin of safety. This concept leads to a rejection criterion based on the
local stress level where the low stressed material is assumed to be under-
utilized and is removed. The removal of material can be conveniently
undertaken by deleting elements from the finite element model using
(Equation 2-9):
Equation ‎2-9
𝑅𝑅
Where, RRi is the current rejection ratio and and are the local and
maximum stress level respectively. The process of material removal over
Page | 27
iterations can be repeated until it reaches to a steady state. At this stage, no
more elements are allowed to be deleted and an Evolutionary Rate (𝐸𝑅) is
added to ( RRi ) as (Equation 2-10):
RRi 1  RRi  ER Equation ‎2-10
The same process with the increased rejection ratio takes place until a new
steady state is obtained. Returning an element to the optimization process is
possible by adding one additional stage (element), if it is permitted. Removing
any element should be in such that the discarded element can be added further
at any stage of the process if needed (Querin et al., 1998). This method is
called Bi-directional Evolutionary Structural Optimization (BESO) and it appears
that it can deliver a more reliable and suitable final optimum design. Figure 2-13
and Figure 2-14 illustrate the initial design domain and optimal topology of the
BESO method applied to the beam problem, respectively.
5m
20m
‎ -13: Design domain (Querin et al., 1998; Huang and Xie, 2011)
Figure 2
Page | 28
‎ -14: Topology optimized design with BESO (Huang and Xie, 2011)
Figure 2
 Direct and indirect use of load path/ load transfer methods:
The above structural optimization procedures based on elimination of elements
has been applied by other researchers resulting in development of methods to
define load transfer within bars and solids. These methods were called
Transferred Force (𝑇𝐹) method. Since these methods do not use any formal
optimization technique, it is quite easy to use and can be implemented into
computational and numerical algorithms (Arora and Harasaki, 2004).
Optimization problems were resolved based on force travel between application
and reaction points by defining an index for two and three dimensional models.
The methods were based on the concept of transferred forces, the part of the
applied load that is transferred through a region of the structure is identified
(Harasaki, 2000). This concept can be explained by a continuum structure
model, Figure 2-15.
Page | 29
Figure ‎2-15: Continuum structure Model (Harasaki 2004)
Here 1 is the loading surface,  2 is the support, 3 is the boundary region of
3 and  4 is the free region. The forces transmitted to  2 comprise two
components: one that goes to the region 3 which is referred to as the
transferred force and another one which goes through the remaining region
called potential transferred force which is the indication of the stiffness of the
region.
The displacements are calculated by applying the forces on the load region.
This analysis is followed by eliminating 3 region from the solution domain and
applying the calculated displacement as an enforced boundary condition. The
force on the support region can then be recorded. The difference between initial
force and defines the transferred traction through the region 3 to the
support surface  2 and can be calculated as (Equation 2-11):
_
Equation ‎2-11
Fi  fi  f f   ij n j   ij n j
where 𝐹 is the difference between initial and final force and ̅ is the new and
is the initial principal stresses.
Page | 30
The elements with low transferred force can be removed from the design.
Therefore, transferred and potential transferred forces offer viable approaches
for conceptual design of structures that need to be developed further. 𝑇𝐹
method only provides qualitative information about the direction of load transfer
with no trajectory mapped in the solution domain.
In the last decade, load path based algorithm methodology has drawn attention
of the researchers. This is due to the reason that load path not only can lead to
statically determinant design but also may provide a tool for new technologies
such as determination of trajectories for carbon fibre placement in composite
structures. A novel fibre placement pattern was defined for highly loaded joints
by (Li et al., 2006) earlier. Optimal design of machine tool bed by load bearing
topology based on the load path theory optimization is another application of
this novel method to identify optimal layout of the stiffener plates conducted
recently (Li et al., 2012). Another application of the implementation of load
paths is the weight and stiffness optimization of reinforcement of shade and
wind sails by carbon fibre.
 Design of shade and wind sails:
Boat sail design has evolved over the years along many development paths in
terms of aerodynamic characteristics using some iterative methods (Fallow,
1996; Shankaran, 2005). The design of sails is a very old activity principally
based on the practice and the experience of sail makers and users, prototype
building and testing on the water, in constant search of performance and safety.
The use of a computer aided design and simulation package can significantly
Page | 31
reduce the time and cost associated with design and testing by optimizing the
design before a prototype is built (Viola and Flay, 2011).
Unlike the aircraft industry where the development has been essentially driven
by commercial consideration, boat sail design needs to comply with the sailing
rules. These rules may impose some limitation in regard to the weight or size of
the components; they have to be as light and stiff as possible (Gilliam, 2006). It
was this issue which led to the development of a number of alternate sailcloth
materials with new technology of reinforcement by carbon fibre. This is an
accepted method in this industry achieving sail with beneficial aspects
regarding the deformation and bending issues (Trimarchi et al., 2011). Carbon
fibre can be used to reinforce a structure with highest lightness and relatively
high stiffness. Since bending is the prevalent stress in a cursing yacht hull, they
are generally built with a fibre reinforced membrane core as:
 Carbon has excellent fatigue life and is extremely strong and rigid
 When combined with a core material Carbon Fibre will deliver substantial
weight reduction
 Consistent (minimal) resin content – about 33% for carbon unitapes
 Greater inter laminar shear strength due to better fibre-to-fibre contact
 Curing at 90⁰C (200⁰F) delivers a very stable part with a very low
coefficient of expansion
 Ability to mold complex shapes and easy to repair
 Results in a 25% lighter hull, deck, and structure that is 10-15% stiffer
then wet-preg
Page | 32
In sail structures the primary stress is membrane tension but many of the
advantages of using carbon fibre remain. Clearly the industry is used to using
carbon fibre and the application of carbon fibre to sail reinforcement is
commercially viable since users want high performance and look to new and
advanced materials to achieve improvements in performance and safety.
Design and manufacture of shade sails is less advanced and alternative
reinforcement may have to be considered. Nylon rope and fibreglass are
obvious candidates that would have good environmental performance. In this
thesis only carbon fibre will be considered as the reinforcing material.
The aim of this thesis will be to show that the possible carbon fibre paths in the
shade and wind sail cloth can be determined iteratively using ANSYS APDL as
a finite element package. Commercial and manufacturing issues will not be
addressed and will be recommended for future work.
2.5. Conclusion
This literature review studied the history and development of load transfer in the
structures and described different methods used to characterise and quantify
the load paths in structures. It also underscored the concept of the structural
optimization and compared the available approaches. There are several
methods that can quantitatively characterize load paths in a structure. All these
methods provide different results and insights into the load transfer. However,
some of these techniques provide more qualitative and quantitative information
efficiency of load transfer along load paths. This study also highlighted the
problem that, in spite of the existence of all the available methods, no single
Page | 33
accepted approach appears to emerge as a clear choice to characterize,
quantify, visualize and tailor load paths. Thus the question of exactly what the
best possible approach is for defining “true” load directions in the structures still
remains unanswered.
Page | 34
CHAPTER 3.
BACKGROUND THEORY
3.1. Introduction
The literature review has identified the need to develop tools to aid the designers
to define load transfer in structures. Although it is clear why load paths are
important in the designing of the structures, there is no commonly accepted
approach to determine the paths and display them to the design engineers. Load
transfer based on the stress trajectories, load path based on the concept of load
flow and finally potential transferred force are the main contributors in this area.
Ideally, a load path method should be able to reflect some specific behaviour of the
structures under the imposed external forces. Thus a method should:
 Visualize the overall path of forces from the application points to the
reaction points
 Indicate the regions with material utilization
 Indicate critical regions with high stress levels
Chapter 2 concluded that load paths that define a region in which a load
component is constant cannot be defined by contours parallel to the principal
stress vectors. Therefore tracing contours following these stress trajectories would
not define the load paths that this research aims to identify.
Load paths derived from the load flow analogy are able to show the direction of the
force within the solution domain and highlight the zones with high stress magnitude
such as stress concentration regions. This method has been used for the
placement of the fibres in composite material and has proved its ability to be used
in industry (Li et al., 2006). On the other hand, this method has not been applied to
truss structures and the application to truss structures therefore became the aim of
this research.
The third possibility for determination of load paths is the potential transferred force
method (Harasaki and Arora, 2001). Although this technique can be used to
determine optimal configurations for truss structures, it is not applicable to provide
qualitative information about where the loads flow. No trajectories can be traced
from the point of loading to the reaction points and it has not been used for shell
structures. This chapter introduces procedures to define load paths in truss
structures and defines procedures to use the paths in the design of truss
structures. It also describes procedures to integrate the new methods into the
Finite Element Package (ANSYS). As there are no default procedures to define
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load paths in FEA packages, an algorithm where stress results are determined
using ANSYS and FORTRAN codes has been developed to read the results and
define the paths. ANSYS is then used to plot these paths for three-dimensional
applications. The load paths provide better understanding of the required layout of
the structure in the initial stage of design. For some simple beam configurations
the general pattern of paths for different loading conditions will be described
regardless of the detailed geometry of the structure. The last part of the chapter
applies the idea of transferred force to trusses and describes how they can
contribute to reinforcement of shell structures.
3.2. Using load path to determine force transfer within the

solution boundaries
Load path originally was proposed as a method to design Strut and Tie models in
reinforced concrete structures (Schlaich et al., 1987). The load path method has
also become a simple and effective instrument to understand the behaviour of the
structures under different loading conditions. Figure 3-1 provides the information
about how a simple load can flows through a bolted joint from the point of origin to
its end.
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‎ -1: Load transfer in a pinned joint(Kelly and Tosh, 2000)

Figure 3
As it can be seen from Figure 3-1, a tension load is applied to the upper plate and
passes through the hole to become a bearing load on the pin. It then transfers in
shear form to reach the lower plate and finally ends in compression form in the
opposite end.
Load paths provide an interesting series of trajectories that may provide an
alternative means of placing reinforcing fibres in structures designed to carry
membrane loads. Such structures include shade cloth erected to provide shade
over large areas and sails used on boats (Figure 3-2). Besides, these structures
deform to carry load as membrane forces. The literature survey does not identify
any analytical procedures based on load paths for placing reinforcing fibres in the
membrane structures. Tension structural designers have used trial and error
strategy to find the “Fibre-path” sails and shades for many years. The ’fibre path’
technology would allow the designers to align the fibres along the primary loads in
a sail and build in multiple fibre patterns to address secondary loads. Sails with
reinforcing fibres have a better wind range than traditional radial sails and also
require less sheet adjustment through different conditions. Since fibre-Path
Page | 38
technology handles secondary loads, the sail holds its design shape throughout
the wind range so the sailors experience better sailing capabilities.
‎ -2: Reinforcing fibres in a yacht sail (Wightsails, 2012)

Figure 3
The use of major principal stress trajectories for engineering applications has been
reported in the literature as a successful reinforcing pattern. The principal stresses
are aligned in directions for which the shear stress is zero. A tensile principal
stress will be carried out by reinforcing fibres and the membrane connecting the
fibres will be lightly loaded. Figure 3-3 and Figure 3-4; however, indicate the main
drawback using the principal stress directions to define the direction of the
reinforcement. A direction for the maximum principal stress and an orthogonal
direction for the minimum principal stress are two sets of principal stresses that
can be observed in Figure 3-3 and Figure 3-4 respectively. According to these
identified directions, two sets of fibres would therefore be required; one set needs
to be stiff enough to resist compression and another set is required to resist
tension. It is noteworthy; the load parallel to the fibres varies along the path.
Page | 39
‎ -3: Major principal stress trajectories

Figure 3
Figure ‎3-4: Minor principal stress trajectories
For that reason similar to other methods, principal stress trajectories experience
some limitations. The placement of fibres along the tensile principal stress
trajectories alone may result in strength improvement but may not represent the
absolute maximum strength improvement possible. To further support for
investigation of load paths, when the loads create a stress field dominated by
tension (such as the stresses around a hole under uniaxial tension such as
Figure 3-3 and Figure 3-4) the resultant dominant paths from the stress trajectories
are very similar plot to the paths obtained from load path method. However, tracing
load trajectories based on these orientations would not result in trajectories where
the loads being transferred are constant in the sense of streamlines in a fluid flow.
Load paths determined by the concept of load flow results trajectories similar to
streamlines in a fluid flow. As the patterns obtained from this method can be
compared to the benchmarks from the paths originated from stress trajectories,
they can be used as an alternative method for fibre reinforcement.
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3.2.1. Load path method clarification:
Load paths have been generally accepted by many researchers (Karkauskas and
Norkus; Chan, 1963; Waldman et al., 1999; Kelly and Tosh, 2000; Arora and
Harasaki, 2004; Sakurai et al., 2007; Wu et al., 2009) as a useful tool for
optimization of a structure against stress concentration. These loads can express
how remote loads are equilibrated through a structure and can also provide insight
into how well a structure is performed its intended load carrying functions. There
was no significant research to define load paths until late 90s when all the
proposed methods could only define some simple structures. Moreover, no
mathematical form to determine load transfer was found until Kelly and Elsley
proposed a method for computing load flow orientation (Kelly and Elsley, 1993).
This method was based on the stress resultants obtained from finite element
analysis. Some of the investigations, development and clarifications by this author
will be covered in the following sections in this chapter.
3.2.2. Load path vector:
As previously described, load paths are the regions carrying an applied load in a
prescribed direction within the structure. This concept of load flow comes from fluid
flow analogy, so it needs to originate from one prescribed location and end in
another. In a three-dimension scale there will be three directions defined in each of
the 𝑥, 𝑦 or 𝑧 axes. For some simple cases such as the tensile loads (Figure 3-5),
there is one direction as the dominant direction while in other cases, such as
Page | 41
bending from a shear force, there is more than one main way that the load flows,
this will be addressed later in the current chapter. For load flow in a single
dominant direction, the concept is illustrated with a hypothetical force “stream tube”
shown in the Figure 3-5.
θ
x
Figure ‎3-5: Schematic of force "stream tube"
The load path defined is bounded by contours in such that there is no contribution
of force in a given direction, say in 𝑥 direction. Equilibrium in 𝑥 direction can be
simplified to:
Pxa  Pxb Equation ‎3-1
There are two stress components that are normal and tangent to the side wall of
the force tube, namely  n and  nt .  n is the local stress acting normal to the plane
and  nt is the shear stress acting along the plane.  nt acts on the face whose
normal is in the n direction and is positive in the positive t direction. Equation 3-1
will be satisfied if the orientation of  n with respect to 𝑥 axis at each point along the
Page | 42
wall is defined by  .  is the angle of transformation of coordinate system. The
orientation of the contours is calculated by satisfying the conditions of
(Equation 3-2):
 sin    cos   0 Equation ‎3-2

n nt
or
 sin    cos 
n nt
The solution to Equation 3-2 can be achieved by expanding the terms in the
equation. Considering the unique differential element in a structure shown in
Figure 3-6:
y
t
 xy n
 nt n
 xy
x x
 xy

 xy
y
Figure ‎3-6: Stress transformation to an arbitrary coordinate system
Page | 43
where is the normal stress component on a plane perpendicular to 𝑥 axis and
is the shear stress component on the same plane. Similarly, is the normal
stress component on a plane prependecular to 𝑦 axis Based on the solid
mechanics formulation regarding the transformation of stresses,  n and  nt can be
transformed using Equation 3-3 and Equation 3-4:
 n   x sin 2    y cos 2   2 xy sin  cos  Equation ‎3-3
and
 nt  ( x  y ) sin  cos    xy (cos 2   sin 2  ) Equation ‎3-4
According to Figure 3-6,  can be calculated from dividing shear stress by normal
stress (Equation 3-5). Having  n and  nt from the equations above, allows updating
the Equation 3-5 to the new form as Equation 3-6 and Equation 3-7:
 nt Equation ‎3-5
tan  
n
( x   y )sin  cos    xy (cos 2   sin 2  ) Equation ‎3-6

tan  
 x sin 2    y cos 2   2 xy sin  cos 
giving:
 x tan 3    xy tan 2    x tan    xy  0
after dividing all terms in by :
Page | 44
x  Equation ‎3-7
tan 3   tan 2   x tan   1  0
 xy  xy
x
tan  (tan 2   1)  (tan 2   1)  0
 xy
Solving Equation 3-7 shows that with only value of for tan  the equation will be
satisfied. Since the value of tan 2  is always equal greater than zero, tan 2   1  1 .
In addition there are two solutions for  in the range of 0    360 , in which each
one will differ 180 from the other. This noticeably reveals that load path is
directionless and can travel from left to right or right to left in an identical direction
regardless of the origination of the paths. A pointing vector (𝑉 tangent to the wall
can therefore be defined for the 𝑥-Path given by
Vx   xi   xy j Equation ‎3-8
A load path in 𝑦 direction (𝑉 can be derived similarly. If the axes are transformed
in such that 𝑥 axis is in the direction of the dominant applied load, these load paths
will be either secondary or complementary.
Vy   y i   yx j Equation ‎3-9
One of the significant aspects of load path is that singularity has no effect on
determination of the direction of the trajectories defined by this method. Looking
closely at Equation 3-10 proves:
Page | 45
Equation ‎3-10

  tan xy
1
x
 xy
lim (tan 1 )  tan 1 
 x 0 x
  90
In Equation 3-10 if  x tends to zero (the case where singularity happens) then 
tends to 90 with respect to 𝑥 axis, so singularity cannot effect the load path
direction. Knowing the direction and the extent of the load is a high priority in the
design discipline. The extent of the load being carried between adjacent contours
in Figure 3-5 is given by Pxa as the external applied force. This force can be
determined by integrating the stresses on a section of the region between two
contours. By knowing  , and , 𝑃 can be obtained (Equation 3-11)
Pxa  ( n sin   nt cos ) A Equation ‎3-11
where A is the cross-sectional area between the contours.
The stresses  n and  nt can be extracted from the finite element analysis packages
such as ANSYS. In the standard version of these packages, load paths cannot be
plotted in the post processing section directly from the solution and thus an
external platform such as FORTRAN codes needs to be developed. Although a
number of codes written by Kelly (Kelly, 2005) could define these paths, additional
improvement was made since this research has begun. These improvements were
Page | 46
to find a unique attribute of load path within different types of structures regardless
of their geometries; these attributes will be covered later in the following.
3.2.3. Load path integration:
The main platform for the finite element package was ANSYS APDL 12.1 due to its
wide use and proved acceptance in the simulation world. FORTRAN was also
selected as the programming code due to its compatibility with the FEA package.
The process of plotting load paths consists of five stages:
 CAD modelling
 Loading and simulation in ANSYS
 Extraction of stresses from every single element
 Exporting to FORTAN program and generating the plotting vectors and
contours
 Importing back the contours to ANSYS in order to plot the load paths
Previously, Kelly et al. (Kelly et al., 2001) established an algorithm in order to
define the load paths contours. These contours illustrate continuous load paths
through a structure and are traced by placing this contours tangent to the load path
vectors generated from FORTRAN codes. Load path interpretation generally is
based on the visualization of the pointing vectors and alternatively, load path
contours can be determined by taking sections through a structure in a direction
perpendicular to the selected loading direction and integrating stresses on these
Page | 47
sections until Equation 3-1 is satisfied. This approach however requires user
interaction and does not lend itself to a global plot for all points on the domain.
The initial stage to achieve the pointing vector approach is to obtain the elemental
information such as nodal stresses from the solution mainstream. The element
used for this purpose has 8 nodes and translational movement at each node.
Solid185 elements in ANSYS are used to interface with the codes. In this chapter it
is mainly focused on the application of 3D elements; however, in the modified and
developed algorithm other types of elements can be used.
In every element, the solution of the model can produce 8 nodal stress vectors and
by averaging these stresses values in their respective element centre, elemental
stress can be reported. These stresses are averaged only internally between the
nodes within the same element. This process must be repeated for all the
elements within the boundaries and once this collection has been made, as
starting element of the path can be selected. By selecting an arbitrary element and
recording the element number, the starting point for the path the general pattern of
the paths can be plotted. The stresses and initiation points for the load paths are
sent to the FORTRAN codes to calculate the pointing vectors at the centroid of
each element. The pointing vector is then defined using a non-structural link
(Figure 3-7). Each link is drawn in such that angular orientation of the link is
tangent to the load path direction. The length of the link can be scaled up to
indicate the qualitative magnitude of axial stress or can be given a unit value to
indicate direction only.
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8 7
4 3
5
6
1 2
Figure ‎3-7: sample pointing vector at the solid element centre
Applying this method to each element produces the required links that can be
plotted in ANSYS to define the pointing vectors and once these links are
generated, they exported back as an input file to ANSYS. The links are then
plotted with the required ANSYS format in the CAD section over the initial
geometry.
A fourth order Runge-Kutta method was used predict the contours through the
vector field by repeatedly projecting forward from one location on the contour to the
next in a similar fashion to plotting streamlines in fluid flow. Runge- Kutta method
(in numerical analysis) is an important family of implicit and explicit iterative
methods for the approximation of the solution of ordinary differential equations.
The use of Runge – Kutta method is defined based on the increment of s as the
increment along the load path. Using this step length can ensure that all the spatial
increments are fixed to a unit magnitude during the generation of the path through
the entire structure.

Page | 49
As an evidence, for a normalized vector field, V is defined over the mesh domain
and initial arbitrary point Pi (Equation 3-12):
dp1  V pi
s
dp2  V 1
pi  dp1
s
2
dp3  V 1
pi  dp2
s
2
Equation ‎3-12
dp4  V 1
pi  dp3
s
2
1
pi 1  pi  ( dp1  dp2  dp3  dp4 )
6
where, 𝑃 is the next point and V pi

is the value of the vector V evaluated at point
𝑃.The vector can be defined at any arbitrary point by first associating the point with
an element and then interpolating from the nodal stress values.
3.2.4. Cantilever plate example:
As an example of the application of load path visualization using the vector plots
approach, a cantilever plate with a tip shear load is examined (Figure 3-8). The
model is a three-dimensional plate under a tip shear load of 100 N in its right wall.
This load is applied to a node in 𝑦 direction downward and is constant and non-
changeable during the simulation. The left surface of the plate is fully fixed. The
length to width ratio of the plate is 3, and the length, height and depth are 0.6, 0.2
and 0.1 , correspondingly. The plate is meshed with 693 nodes in 400 elements.
The size of the elements is completely subjective and depends on the complexity
Page | 50
of the structure and accuracy of the results. A finer mesh can generate more
contours hence, resulting more accurate paths. This is a simple shear loaded
example and thus 400 nodes would be enough in terms of the visualization of the
load transferred within the boundaries. All elements are quadratic Solid185 with 8
nodes with isotropic behaviour. Young’s modulus of 210GPa and Poisson’s ratio of
0.3 are considered through static structural analysis.
‎ -8: Cantilever block boundary condition

Figure 3
Regarding selection of the element for initiation of the load path, 20 random
elements are considered. The recorded element numbers accompanying the nodal
stresses in each element are then defined in the FORTRAN code. The FORTRAN
codes produce 3200 links with individual length of 0.01 and at the final stage the
links are imported back to ANSYS in the post processing environment to visualize
the load paths. The load path contours for loads parallel to the 𝑥 axis, are shown in
Figure 3-9.
Page | 51
‎ -9: Load path in 𝑥 direction

Figure 3
It can be clearly observed that some of the regions are not traversed by the load
paths since they are not traversed by paths selected in the random selection. The
FORTRAN codes are written in a way to be able to show high stress zones in the
structures. In Figure 3-9, the paths are given a spectrum of 10 colours. The colour
presentation can reflect the stress level of each zone in the domain and therefore,
the designer will be able to have more understanding of performance of the
structure in their further study. Red colour represents the highest stress level while
blue shows the lowest and the rest of colours in the spectrum indicate the stress
with the extent between the maximum and minimum level. The looping of the paths
shows existence of bending in the structure which will be discussed further in the
next section.
The contours plotted in the Figure 3-9 have the dominant load transformation
within the structure. Due to the boundary condition top half bear tension and
bottom half bear compression and transfer the shear load from left to right.
Figure 3-10 gives the y direction load paths and 𝑦-Path load paths show shear
transfer from right to left. Although load paths can be generalised to three
Page | 52
dimensions, examples in this section are restricted to cases with non-trivial paths
in only 2 dimensions for clarity. However, only the front view of the model can be
observed in all the examples in this thesis
Figure ‎3-10: Load path in 𝑦 direction
3.2.5. Example of an L-Shape structure:
An L-shaped domain with vertical shear load is the employed example to test
optimization algorithms in order to define the optimal topology. As one of the
requirement of the code, this model is a three-dimensional block with height and
width of 0.2 m and depth of 0.1 m . The applied load as shear applied to the middle
element at the centre of right wall with magnitude of 100 N as shown in
Figure 3-11 and is constant during the analysis. Boundary conditions constrain the
top wall of the model. All other nodes are free to move in 3 degree of freedom.
Finer meshing has been chosen for this model as it has more complicated
geometry compare to the previous model. 1936 nodes in 1470 elements have
Page | 53
been created. All of the elements are 8 node Solid185 elements in ANSYS. The
Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio is 210 GPa and 0.3 respectively.
‎ -11: L-Shape structure boundary condition

Figure 3
Similar procedure is applied to transfer data between the FORTRAN codes and
ANSYS and the outcome for 𝑦 direction load has been plotted in Figure 3-12. The
red colour identifies zones in which the magnitude of the pointing vector is high.
Similarly blue colour contours present lower value of pointing vector. As expected,
the corner in the geometry is stressed more than the other zones because of the
stress concentration caused by a sharp edge in the model.
Page | 54
Figure ‎3-12: 𝑦 direction load paths
Figure 3-13 provides information of how load is transferred in x direction. The
existence of loop in the paths reflects the existence of bending. This bending is
caused by shear load.
Figure ‎3-13: 𝑥 direction load paths
In three dimensional applications with an element with free face, the paths are
projected parallel to the free surface when the angle of vector to the surface is
small and this implies on order to prevent the path leaving the solution domain due
to numerical errors. The amount can be set in the program and is totally
Page | 55
changeable but usually vectors within 30 degrees of tangency are subjected to
projection.
3.2.6. Properties of the paths
As it was mentioned earlier, load path determination is totally based on the
geometry of the model and it is impossible to have a general idea how the force
can flow in every structure from the application of the load to the support.
Nevertheless, some patterns can be pre-defined for some simple cases. Following
is the load cases to be considered for simple rectangular domains:
 Pure tension
 Pure compression
 Pure bending
 Cantilever bending
 Simply supported bending
 Torsion
For the purpose of generalization of load flow, the pure tension case is considered
first and without any discontinuities in the structure, the load can trace straight from
left to right. Since the load is only in x direction, no paths can be expected in the
normal direction, 𝑦 direction. Since the path carries the same load, they are equally
spaced (Figure 3-14).
Page | 56
Figure ‎3-14: Simple tension x-paths
Pure compression has a similar pattern to pure tension but the difference is that
the load is transferred from left to right and as the geometry is totally symmetric,
load paths are straight and equally spaced. As the load transfer is directionless
then the plotted arrows are only for visualization purpose.
Figure ‎3-15: Simple compression x-paths
Pure bending in Figure 3-16 provides a linear stress distribution from top to bottom.
Therefore if the paths bound regions transferring the same load, the contours will
be closer together at the top and bottom of the beam in Figure 3-17 where the
structure experience higher stress.
Page | 57
y  xx
z x
Mz
Figure ‎3-16: Bending stress
Higher stress regions
Figure ‎3-17: Pure bending scenario
A more complex case occurs when a shear load is applied to a beam. Shear load
creates a bending moment in the beam and make the load paths lose their uniform
linearity and form loops or eddies in the solution domain. Since shear stress
distribution in 𝑦 direction transversely is quadratic, the pattern is non-uniform
straight.
Figure 3-18 (b) shows 𝑉 contours in a cantilever bending. In more details; a sub-
domain that is bounded by two load paths including the mid-plane of the beam and
the loaded right hand wall (Figure 3-19) can be created. 𝑥-force equilibrium is
 yx
maintained by a shear stress at the mid-plane, , and a direct stress at the right
hand wall,
 xx .
Page | 58
𝑥-Path
(a) (b)
𝑦-Path
(c)
Figure ‎3-18: Cantilever bending load picture
The two edges defined by the curved contours are free from any 𝑥-force. This case
demonstrates that the stress that ensures the subdomains, are in equilibrium can
vary between direct stress and shear stress as the load bearing surfaces are re-
oriented in the coordinate axes.
Px
Px
Figure ‎3-19: Force equilibrium in 𝑥 direction
The loops in simply supported beam are similar in cantilevered beam; the loops
form oval/circular shape depends on the ratio of the block. In this loading condition,
existence of bending requires existence of the loops. Similar behaviour in 𝑦
direction can be perceived (Figure 3-20).
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𝑥-Path
𝑦-Path
Figure ‎3-20: Simply supported beam
The most efficient load path is a straight path of constant cross-sectional area
parallel to the load (such as a cable in tension) carrying load from the point of load
application to the point of reaction. However, load paths are forced to follow curved
trajectories dictated by the geometry of the domain or the creation of bending
moments. The force is constant along the path identified in Figure 3-21, a stress
concentration narrows the path so that the ratio of the force to the cross-sectional
area gives the higher stress experienced at the stress concentration. This can
happen at some discontinuity in the structure, such as a hole or fillet.
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Stress concentration regions
‎ -21: Geometry discontinuity effect on load paths

Figure 3
If the path is not straight, the bending moments are introduced that are equilibrated
by tractions in the orthogonal direction acting on the boundaries. For the path
segment, for example, Figure 3-22, the tractions on the top and bottom boundaries
do not contribute to a force in the 𝑥 direction. There is no restraint on force in the 𝑦
direction. The bending moment due to the offset in the loads pxa can be
equilibrated by a distribution of p ya along the boundary.
Px
Px
Py
Py
Figure ‎3-22: Interpretation of curved paths
Page | 61
3.2.7. Structural configuration
Typical structural configurations to transfer the load for each case identified in the
previous section are presented in Figure 3-23
Figure ‎3-23: Structural configuration(Kelly et al., 2010)
The geometries proposed are suggested by the contour patterns of the load paths.
These configurations define the cross-sectional geometries required to carry
bending moments and shear. For axial load, the relevant property is the cross-
sectional area and is independent of the cross-section geometry. The cross-
section is therefore defined by other requirements such as buckling resistance in
the case of compression. For bending, the second moment of area is essential and
is highly sensitive to the cross-sectional configuration. Transfer of shear load not
only requires a path for the shear and bending but also includes connecting
Page | 62
members (such as the shear web) to ensure compatibility of the cross-section.
Once a clear interpretation of the types of load and the load paths are defined,
alternate configurations for the structure can be identified by the designer.
3.2.8. Discussion
To determine the load paths, the three-dimensional structures with solid elements
were studied in this chapter. A formulation to define the load path from the theory
defined by Kelly was covered and further refined to plot the load paths in the
ANSYS package. Then a procedure was used to determine the appropriate
trajectories for solid elements. Number of examples and applications were
presented to give an overview of the behaviour of the load paths. However, as
mentioned earlier they are completely subjective and totally depend on the
complexity of the structure. Then structural configuration for a rectangle solution
domain under some loading condition was discussed.
3.3. Exploration of load paths in trusses
In this section of the study, determination of load paths in trusses will be covered.
In trusses the load path is determined by the member that carries majority of the
load (Kelly and Elsley, 1993). These members are crucial to the structure since
any damage or failure to them would collapse the entire design. However, the
other members only play a complementary role in the transformation of the load in
the structure and can be removed from the domain. The internal force can be set
Page | 63
to a criterion to determine the load paths from the FEA analysis. The criteria then
will deduce the elements based on an iterative procedure through the solution.
The reduction of the members can follow the method introduced by Xie and Steven
(Xie and Steven, 1997) called Evolutionary Structural Optimization Method (ESO).
ESO is based on the simple concept of gradual elimination of inefficient material
from a structure. Usually the path of force transfer is quite complicated to be
defined as the force must follow the members in the truss. It is then possible to
determine which parts of the structures carry the most applied load. This technique
can provide a useful tool for engineers and architects in their design processes.
3.3.1. Gradual reduction based on force level
The internal force in members can be used to represent force transfer from the
load point to the support. The force magnitude in any part of the structure can be
determined by conducting a finite element analysis. If the member is not carrying
significant load, it can be removed from the structure in such that its removal does
not allow a mechanism to form and lead to failure in the structure. The element
removal from the structure can be based on a rejection scalar parameter that is
assumed to be under-utilized. However, since removal could permit a mechanism
to form and cause divergence, an alternative solution to perform this removal is
introduced by reducing the Young’s modulus of the member.
The internal force value of each single element can be determined by comparing;
e
for example, an element with f i as the local internal force with the maximum
Page | 64
max
force value of fi as the maximum global force value. After each finite element
analysis, element which satisfies the following condition can have their modulus
reduced:
fi e Equation ‎3-13
max <r
fi
where  r is assigned to be removal ratio.
In ANSYS all elements for trusses have chosen to be “Link 180”. Link180 is a bar
that can be used in a variety of engineering applications. This element can be used
to model trusses, sagging cables, links, springs, etc. This 3-D bar element is a
uniaxial tension-compression element with three degrees of freedom at each node:
translations in the nodal 𝑥, 𝑦 and 𝑧 directions. Tension-only (cable) and
compression-only (gap) options are supported. As in a pin-jointed structure, no
bending of the element is allowed. Moreover, plasticity, creep, rotation, large
deflection, and large strain capabilities are considered in order to model these
behaviours in future developments of the algorithms.
The algorithm implemented for determination of the load path in truss structures
consists of eight iterative stages. These stages can be repeated for a number of
times depending on the set up removal ratio. For more clarification, the load path in
Figure 3-24 which is a part of multi bay truss can be obtained from the following six
stages:
1. Determine axial force in each member as well as 𝑥 and 𝑦 components.
Page | 65
2. Define direction of path to be plotted
3. Define starting node and force at starting node
4. Identify sign of path exiting node
I. Define section at node as vertical for 𝑥-force, horizontal for y-force
II. If entering force is tension one side of section – exiting force must be
tension from other side or compression from same side. If entering
force is compression – exiting force must be compression on other
side of section or tension on same side
5. Select member with largest force component (𝑥 or 𝑦) and obeying sign rule
on axial force. (Add magnitude of force component in brackets)
6. Define new node and go to I
N5 2T N4
2
1.414C 1.414T
2
N1 1C N2 1C N3
1 1
Figure ‎3-24: sample section of a multi bay truss
In Figure 3-24 Ni i  1...4 are the nodes which are connected to each other with
Link180 elements. 𝐶 and 𝑇 represent the member which is under compression or
tension. Table 3-1 shows a summary of the forces:
Page | 66
‎ -1: Summary of the force

Table 3
Member Axial Force
12 1C 1 0
23 1C 1 0
14 1.414C 1 1
24 0 0 0
34 1.414T 1 1
45 2T 2 0
For plotting 𝑥-path, the sign convection must be satisfied, hence:
Start at node with external x-force (ie. N1 and member 𝑁 𝑁 ). Consider vertical
plane at N 4 . Look for compression on right of plane or tension on left of plane.
Hence path goes from 𝑁 to 𝑁 , Figure 3-25.
N5 2T N4
2
(1)
1.414C
(1)
2
N1 N2 N3
Figure ‎3-25: 𝑥-force transfer
Page | 67
Now follow load in member 𝑁 𝑁 . Applying rules above gives the second 𝑥-paths,
Figure 3-26.
N5 2T N4
2
(1)
(1) (1)
2
N1 N2 N3
‎ -26: 𝑥-force transfer

Figure 3
For the 𝑦-path start at N1 or N3 . Here start at N1 and apply rules, (Figure 3-27)
N5 N4
1.414T
(1) (1)
N1 N2 N3
1 1
‎ -27: 𝑦-force transfer

Figure 3
Once the algorithm of the determination of load path is set up, it can be
implemented numerically in number of examples. The results from these examples
then can be compared with the benchmarks in the literature on truss optimization
discipline to validate the approach.
Page | 68
3.3.2. Example of a one bay truss
To find a possible load path for the loading and support conditions shown in
Figure 3-28, a one bay truss with unit width and height producing a square is
employed. A vertical load of 100 N is applied to the bottom right side of the truss.
The value of force has been taken from the force applied by Xie and Steven (Xie
and Steven, 1993) in their paper. This load has to be constant during the analysis
at all time. Young’s modulus of the elements has been chosen to 210 GPa .
The truss is analysed by ANSYS APDL in the static structural environment. The
element as proposed earlier is chosen to be Link180 with isotropic behaviour. It
means that stress distribution is uniform along the length of the element. Two full
supports at left side do not allow any movements to the node N1 and N 4 . However,
the other joints ( N 2 and N3 ) are free to move in any translational directions.
𝑁 𝑁
𝑁
𝑁
Figure ‎3-28: One bay truss example
Page | 69
The axial forces obtained from each element are tabulated and stored as a
parameter in ANSYS temporary memory. Then the lowest value from the table is
extracted and the member number associated with the called value is written as a
new parameter. Once this parameter is generated, the reduction procedure starts.
The reduction can be performed in two ways; the ratio method or the cutting
method. In the ratio method as explained earlier in this chapter, Young’s modulus
is reduced by to certain extent. In this example the removal is set to just one single
element reduction in one iteration and the designer can interact with the design
process to approve which element is removed from the structure in every step. The
reduction of elements is performed by killing the elements just deactivates the
selected elements. A deactivated element remains in the model but contributes a
near-zero stiffness value of (1.0𝐸-6) to the overall matrix. Deactivated elements
contribute nothing to the overall mass (or capacitance, etc.) of the matrix.
Figure ‎3-29: Final design after 4 iterations.
The reduction is performed for four iterations and then a statically determinant
structure is achieved (Figure 3-30):
Page | 70
(1) (2)
(3)
Figure ‎3-30: Reduction process for the one bay truss
In this reduction the elements shown with lighter colours are more desired to be
eliminated from the domain. These colours depict the lower internal force value
among all the elements. It is noteworthy; the convergence of the evolutionary
method can be obtained via either the reduction ratio or constraining the number of
iterations to a predefined value. There is also possibility of the setting up a
statically determinate design criterion to fix the ending time. In this thesis the
iterations constraint is taken into consideration.
3.3.3. Example of a two bay truss:
Similar approach was taken for a two bay truss with cross section area of 1 cm2 and
unit length for each bay. A load of 100 N was applied to the bottom right corner.
Page | 71
And then FEA and other procedure were applied in ANSYS APDL program,
Figure 3-31:
‎ -31: Two bays model

Figure 3
The reduction of the element was set to be the member with the lowest axial force.
So it was expected to have only one element removed at every step unless
multiple elements with identical values of axial forces were observed. The
procedure of the reduction is detailed in Figure 3-32:
Page | 72
(1) (2)
(3) (4)
(5) (6)
(7) (8)
Figure ‎3-32: The reduction process of the two bay truss
In Figure 3-32 elements are coloured in spectrum of 10 colours where red depicts
the highest value and Blue the lowest extent of internal force.
Page | 73
Table ‎3-2: Axial force based reduction
Element Number and force magnitude
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
1
-1302.5 -766.95 443.71 639.53 1291 0 406.85 -39.804 488.81 -350.56 -432.52 471.04 -437.87
1 2 3 4 5 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
2
-1302.5 -766.95 443.71 639.53 1291 406.85 -39.804 488.81 -350.56 -432.52 471.04 -437.87
1 2 3 4 5 7 9 10 11 12 13
3
-1290.7 -757.04 458.14 649.43 1302.8 377.38 461.99 -377.38 -461.99 481.16 -427.75
1 2 3 4 5 9 10 11 12 13
Iterations
4
-1014.4 -1014.4 276.57 553.15 1418 611.55 3.22E-13 -611.55 650.68 -618.44
1 2 3 4 5 9 11 12 13
5
-1014.4 -1014.4 276.57 553.15 1418 611.55 -611.55 650.68 -618.44
1 2 4 5 9 11 12 13
6
-1335.3 -1335.3 0 1329.4 940.06 -940.06 749.71 0
1 2 5 9 11 12
7
-1335.3 -1335.3 1329.4 940.06 -940.06 749.71
1 2 5 9 11
8
-1000 -1000 2000 1414.2 -1414.2
Page | 74
It is noteworthy; the final truss has two members connected at node N 2 . This would
give a singular stiffness matrix if the killed members are actually removed. Instead,
the killed members are remained with reduced stiffness and prevent singularity in
the stiffness matrix. In iteration 6 of the reduction, two members indicate no carried
load since their recorded axial force is zero. Removal of two members at the same
time occasionally is possible if two members meet each other in a node and lack
one complementary member. This concept is explained in more details in
Figure 3-33:
Figure ‎3-33: Clarification of force equilibrium in node 4
In the node N 4 , three elements 𝑒 𝑒 and 𝑒 meet each other. Element e3 is vertical
and thus carries the force only in 𝑦 direction. Element e4 is angled and theoretically
carries the load in both 𝑥 and 𝑦 directions. Similar interpretation would be true for
element e13 as well. It means that it can carry the load in 𝑥 direction. During the
reduction process, e3 was removed from the solution domain while the other two
Page | 75
members are still active. Removing element e3 causes the equilibrium of the node
to fail since there is no more elements to cancel out the load caused by e4 in 𝑦
direction and hence e4 will be automatically removed from the domain. Similar
concept would be considered for 𝑒 as well.
The procedure obtained from both one and two bay truss can be compared and
validated to the optimization of trusses examined by Harasaki (Nha et al., 1998;
Harasaki, 2000; Harasaki and Arora, 2001; Arora and Harasaki, 2004). This
method can lead to statically determinate design. Statically determinate structures
are geometrically unchangeable and consisting of a series of one- span beams
with or without overhangs connected together by means of hinges.
3.3.4. Example of a multi-bay truss
To expand the method to more complex trusses, a multi-bay truss consisting of 3
bays with the ratio of three and different loading conditions is considered. This
example validates the results by comparison with benchmarks in the literature. The
width with the unit value and the height of the truss with the half times to the length
is examined. Two full supports are placed at the very bottom of the structure.
These supports forced zero displacement on the associated nodes in any direction.
A tip vertical load of 100N is located in the middle of the structure in the bottom
flange. The material property of 210 GPa as Young’s modulus is considered for this
model.
Page | 76
This model consists of 10 nodes and 21 elements. The nodes are connected to
each other via two ways; regular and overpopulation meshing method. In the
regular method the nodes are connected to each other with horizontal, vertical and
diagonal members (Figure 3-34). In the overpopulation method every node is
connected to other nodes to provide all the possibility of load transfer
(Figure 3-35).
‎ -34: Multi-bay truss with regular meshing pattern

Figure 3
‎ -35: Multi-bay truss with overpopulation meshing pattern

Figure 3
After FEA analysis and the reduction procedure are conducted, the total number of
the elements is reduced down from 21 to 5 elements at the final stage,
Figure 3-36.
Page | 77
Figure ‎3-36: Final design for the multiple bay structure
As it is observed, the result from both meshing methods is identical with no effect
on the final plot of the remaining members. The achieved result can be also
validated from the result from the benchmarks in the literature (Karnovsky and
Lebed, 2009). Figure 3-37 reveals illustrates the weight reduction in every step of
the elimination:
200
150
Weight (kg)
100
50
0
1 2 3 4 5 6
Iteraion Number
Figure ‎3-37: Total weight analysis
3.3.5. Discussion
Optimized design can be generated from the initial structure by different methods
when a truss structure is subjected to multiple external forces. The optimized
design can interpret the load path in the discrete structures as they comprise a
finite number of clearly defined members which carry only axial load. The above
Page | 78
study explained a method to determine load paths in the trusses by formulating a
numerical approach.
The procedure developed was based on the Evolutionary Method originally
proposed by Xie and Steven. The Evolutionary Method acts via a reduction
criterion which was explained and utilized in a number of examples. The achieved
results were similar to the optimized structures defined in the literature using shape
and topology optimization procedures. Consequently, this validation assures the
applicability of the procedure in other applications which may be extended to new
areas. An overlaying of truss and membrane is proposed for determination of load
path in the boat sails and shade structures which will be investigated in the next
chapter.
3.4. Conclusion
Chapter three discussed two formulations to find load paths in order to illustrate the
concept of load path in both continuum and discrete structures and then some idea
of generating load path for sail structures were explained. Formulation by Kelly et
al. (Kelly et al., 2010) earlier to this research could determine the load paths in the
continuum structures while it was not applicable through ANSYS as the FEA
package. The development of the algorithm and the process of obtaining load
paths and the integration into ANSYS were therefore explained. The formulation
was applied to a cantilever beam and L-Shape structure. Regardless of the type of
the structure in a rectangle solution domain, the idea which was examined through
some specific examples resulted visualisation of some characteristics of the load

Page | 79
path that can be generalized into the other applications. This idea was classified
into four different categories:
 Pure tension
 Pure compression
 Pure bending
 Cantilever bending
 Simply supported bending
The extension of load paths to trusses was also explained later in this chapter and
the idea of considering the axial force as the parameter was proposed. This was
followed by applying an Evolutionary Method (𝐸𝑀) to eliminate the element from
the structure. The combination of the axial force method and EM provided
promising results from examples.
As there is no published numerical method to place carbon fibre paths in the
industrial boat sail structures, proposal of a method comprise of axial force
criterion, 𝐸𝑀 method and membrane analysis may be a great step for this
particular application. The modelling of membranes and fibre reinforcement will be
covered later in the next chapter and the application of the formulation and the
attained results will be presented in Chapter 5.
Page | 80
CHAPTER 4.
NUMERICAL STUDY OF LOAD
PATHS IN SHELL AND PLATE
STRUCTURES
4.1. Introduction:
Thin plates are extensively used in all fields of engineering; in architectural
structures, bridges, hydraulic structures, pavements, containers, airplanes,
missiles and ships. It is essential to understand how the load travels in the tension
structures under boundary conditions. This additional information would open the
designers’ vision to have deeper insight through the design. The wide application
of tension structures in engineering is due to the following advantages:
 Efficiency of load-carrying behaviour
 High degree of reserved strength and structural integrity

Chapter4Numerical Study of load paths in Shell and Plate Structures
 High strength to weight ratio. This criterion is commonly used to estimate
structural component efficiency: the larger this ratio, the more optimal is a
structure
 High stiffness
 Containment of space
In the area of tension structures, the sail and yacht construction industry has
become the front runner when it comes to implementation of fibre reinforced resin
material and construction techniques (Beck et al., 2009). However, in respect to
windsurfing field everything is comprised purely of previous experience, prototype
building and testing on the water. The use of computer aided design and
simulation packages can significantly reduce the time and cost associated with
design and testing the design before a prototype is built. The optimum use of
carbon fibre in the sails can reduce the total cost of the product. Yet, there is no
validated method to employ the carbon fibre to sail construction. Hence,
establishing a finite element method not only can provide the designer stress
distribution and other stress resultants but also can deliver information of how
fibres distribute through the domain. To avoid any possible error in determination
of the carbon fibre through finite element analysis, the tension structure with their
large deflection must be thoroughly understood.
This chapter aims to investigate shells deflection under uniformly distributed
pressure load in ANSYS. The analysis must be carried out in the static condition,
so that the load path determination algorithm can be implemented in the
membrane structures. Essentially, the analysis needs to be through geometric

Page | 82
nonlinearity to tolerate the condition of large deflection imposed by wind load in the
real situation. In order to obtain the possible load paths in the yacht and cruising
boat sails, the first step is to simulate a shell as the main cloth and then validate
the results with the theory of shells and plates and then overlay the suggested
method to find the load paths. A shell element for the analysis of thin and moderate
plate and shell structures is formulated along with the compatible link element. The
overlaid elements are created for the analysis of laminated fibre reinforced boat
sails.
Moreover, a brief attempt is made to emphasise on the physical meanings of
engineering shell theories and the adapted basics and supplementary
assumptions. Then the numerical results obtained from finite element analysis
(ANSYS APDL) can be compared with the theories. This chapter mainly highlights:
 The basic concept of shells and membranes
 Formulation of large deflection in the plates
 Analysis on a circular plate under large deflection
 Analysis on a clamped and corner fixed rectangle model
 Determination of possible load paths in the circular and rectangle model
Page | 83
4.2. Theory of shells and plates:
4.2.1. General concept
Firstly, it is worth introducing some general terms used in the plate analysis
formulation to be used later in this chapter. Sails encounter deflection through
sailing or competition caused by wind pressure. This deflection is generally large
compared to the overall dimensions of the sail, so large deflection theory of the
membranes must be used to simulate the sails. The fundamental assumptions of
the elastic theory of plate under large deflection stated as follows:
1. The material of the plate is elastic, homogeneous and isotropic
2. The plate is initially flat
3. The deflection of the mid-plane is fairly large compared with the thickness of
the plate. So the slope of the deflected surface is therefore very large in
comparison with unity.
4. The normal lines initially normal to the middle plane before deflection remain
straight and normal to the middle surface during the deformation and the
length of such elements is not altered
Generally, plates may be classified to three different categories according to their
thicknesses:
a
1. THICK PLATES, when the ratio of 8:
h
Where a in this inequality is the area of the plate and h is the thickness of the
plate. The analysis of such bodies includes all the components of stresses, strains,
Page | 84
and displacements as for solid bodies using the general equations of three-
dimensional elasticity.
a
2. MEMBRANES, when the ratio of 80  :
h
Membranes carry the lateral loads by in-plane axial tensile forces 𝑁 (and shear
forces). These forces are called membrane forces; they produce a projection on a
vertical axis and thus balance a lateral load applied to the plate-membrane.
a
3. THIN PLATES with 8   80 :
h
This group represents an intermediate type of the plates. Depending on the value
w
of the ratio the part of flexural and membrane forces may vary.
h
where w in this division is the maximum deflection of the plate.
Generally, sail and shade sails can be considered as membranes, therefore the
theory associate with membrane deflection would be considered in the following
section. The plate in Figure 4-1 illustrates the terms to be used later in this chapter.
𝑞 𝑎
𝑓𝑦𝐵 𝑓𝑦𝐴
𝑓𝐵 𝑓𝐴
𝑓𝑥𝐵 𝑓𝑥𝐴
w
𝐵 h A
Figure ‎4-1: Static condition of equilibrium in a shell
Page | 85
Where 𝑞 is the applied dynamic pressure, , and their components in 𝑥 and 𝑦
axis are reaction forces in 𝐴 and 𝐵.
4.3. Modelling of a clamped circular plate:
this part of the study validates finite element analysis approach by comparing with
shell theory. ANSYS classic is chosen as the platform for the analysis due to its
wide use and compatibility with third party applications. Thin and moderate thin
shell structures such as shades and sails are analysed usually by Shell elements
in ANSYS. Membrane analyses are difficult to conduct because the omission of
bending stiffness often leads to singular solutions of the stiffness matrix under
transverse loads. To achieve equilibrium, transverse pressure loads must be
equilibrated by membrane action which requires a nonlinear analysis. In order to
satisfy the enforced conditions in the membrane, distributing the pressure through
number of load steps, pre-tensioning of the membrane, radially stiffening of the
membrane and advance feature of ANSYS using Stabilizer and Line search are
implemented. An FEA structural analysis is conducted on a three dimensional
circular model clamped in the radius edge. The radius of the plate is 8.70 and the
thickness is 4 . The model is used to explain the validation of the analysis steps
and capability of the modelling for the layered elemental creation which will be
discussed later in this chapter.
Page | 86
4.3.1. Material characteristics
Materials characteristics used in the current analysis are adapted from the values
used in the sail construction industry (CyTec, 2011), woven polyester (WP)
sailcloth with and Young’s modulus of 873 MPa and a Poisson’s ratio of 0.3.
4.3.2. Element
The element used for this model is Shell181. This element is suitable to analyse
thin to moderately-thick shell structures. It is a 4-node element with six degrees of
freedom at each node: translations in the x , y and z directions, and rotations
about the x , y and z axes. Shell181 can be used for linear, large rotation,
deflection and large strain nonlinear applications .This element is well suited for
sail modelling since it will give the designer the chance of stiffening the model as it
encounters the distributed pressure during the analysis (ANSYS, 2009).
According to Zienkiewicz and Taylor (Zienkiewicz and Taylor, 2005), the elements
with reduced integration scheme can improve responses for thin plates and shells.
Since the predicted transverse shear stresses are found to be incorrect in shell
structures, accuracy of integration can be increased by using more integration
points, while more points may not increase the accuracy of the computed FE
results. FE results may become more accurate if the order of quadrature is
reduced (Cook, 2001).Therefore, the reduced integration behaviour is chosen for
the shell elements in this research. The shell elements used in this analysis do not
resist any bending and thus the feature of the “membrane only” is chosen for the
Page | 87
element creation. This enforced limitation to the elements, assures the designer
that the structure deflects easily under the wind load and has only translational
degree of freedom; however, there are no rotational movements. The elements
distribution can be found in the Figure 4-2:
‎ -2: Shell elements distribution

Figure 4
The size of the element is selected based on final 𝑧 deflection compare to the
theory of plate by Timoshenko (Timoshenko et al., 1959) presented in the
Table 4-1. The selected size is 51 cm which is the closest value to the theory. In
the theory of Timoshenko, flexible tension structures similar to what was
implemented like in this research, the deflection w may become very large in
comparison to h . In such cases the resistance of the plate to bending can be
neglected, hence the maximum deflection can be calculated from Equation 4-1
where terms are defined from Figure 4-1:
qa Equation ‎4-1
w  0.662a 3
Eh
Page | 88
‎ -1: Circular element size

Table 4
Element Size ANSYS Theory ERR%
a/11 1.32514 0.093058 92
a/13 0.96821 0.093058 90
a/15 0.095423 0.093058 2
a/17 0.094081 0.093058 1
a/18 0.096477 0.093058 9
4.3.3. Boundary conditions, and loading
To confirm the analysis steps and the implemented parameters with Timoshenko
theory of plate and shells (Timoshenko et al., 1959), a clamped circle is used. The
clamped circle has no DOF (degree of freedom) in all directions in the edge
(Figure 4-3). This is simulated by applying the fully support in the edge nodes
within ANSYS. However, the other elements are free to move in x , y and z
directions.
‎ -3: Clamped circle

Figure 4
Page | 89
Modelling of the pre-tension in the plate is carried out with the radially stiffening of
the membrane in the first step of the loading step with 8 enforced
displacement. For the convergent purpose, a point load of 1.3E-6 N is assumed to
be acting in the normal direction to the plate at the centroid of the circle in the 2nd
loading step while it is removed from the boundary conditions later during the
analysis. This is due to the fact that one step load application would lead to a non-
convergent solution therefore; the membrane must be stiff enough to react with the
imposed load (Figure 4-4).
‎ -4: Point load in the centre and enforced displacement in the edge
Figure 4
Uniform pressure of 56 Pa is applied normal to the membrane (Blicblau et al.,
2008). The pressure is static and remains constant during the analysis. Due to the
distortion discussed earlier, the load is applied in 9 load steps of the increments for
the convergent purpose graphed in the Figure 4-5:
Page | 90
70
Magnitude of the pressure (Pa)

60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Loading step Number
Figure ‎4-5: Pressure ramping function
As Figure 4-5 shows, the pressure must be slightly increased up to loading step 8,
however, afterwards membrane can be subjected to a much bigger load, which
means after a certain point the membrane is stiff enough and let the platform to
solve any elemental equations.
4.3.4. The solution
To begin the analysis, a total number of 2352 Shell181 elements and 2409 nodes
are used. Large displacement is activated in order to solve the model in
geometrical nonlinear. Stress stiffening is also used to make the material stiffer
once stress is applied. Newton-Rophson iteration is chosen and the stepping time
may vary in each different steps. The reason of analysing plate through geometric
nonlinearity and different loading steps is due to the fact that the model does not
resist bending and thus the elemental formulation can easily be distorted if the
plate is not stiff enough.
Page | 91
4.3.5. Post processing
It is evident that maximum 𝑧 deflection occurs in the centre of the plate. The
maximum deflection at the centroid is 0.094 m while there is no deflection in the
edge as it is fully constrained in all DOF. This is the result which was expected and
validated by the theory of plate by Timoshenko presented in the Table 4-1.
Figure 4-6 provides information of 𝑧 deflection contours over the entire model:
Figure ‎4-6: Z deflection (m)
From Figure 4-6, the symmetrical behavior of the model can be understood since
the deflection is completely symmetric about z axis.
Page | 92
Figure ‎4-7: Von Mises stress (Pa)
The stress distribution is also graphed in Figure 4-7. which illustrates that Von
Mises stress in the centroid is in maximum extent and the clamed edge is
experiencing the lowest extent. This is is expected from the distribution of load into
the membrane along 𝑧 axis.
Above results indicate that the procedure of the loading steps and pretentioning of
the model do not affect the result and model remains symmetrical in 𝑧 direction
and maximum 𝑧 deflection agrees with shell theory, Table 4-1. From this promising
results it can be understood that the method of modelling can be extended to a
rectangle shade and cruising boat sail simulated by overlaying meshing method in
order to determine the possible load paths.
Page | 93
4.4. Overlaying meshing method
Essentially a reinforced tension structure is a mixture of two or more materials that
are distinct at one length scale but together form a single structural entity at a
longer length scale. One example is long continuous fibres imbedded in a matrix
material. The fibres, either unidirectional or interwoven, are usually layered to form
a laminate.
An overlaid Shell180 and Link181 element is implemented in this research in order
to find the possible load paths in the tension structures. By combining these two
elements a finite element model for reinforced shells is formulated. The reinforced
finite element model employs elastic constitutive relationship for the main cloth,
discrete link elements for modelling of reinforcement and bonded joints for bonding
the slippage between the main cloth and reinforcement. The numerical results
show that the model can predict the behaviour of the laminated tension structures
under uniformly distributed wind load.
The four and eight node isotropic plate elements for thin plates and shells are
generally used for thin and moderate thin shells and two node beam elements are
usually implemented in the finite element models of reinforced structures (Brezzi et
al., 1989; Ranjbaran, 1992). Due to the fact that beam elements can resist
bending, it would not be a suitable element to be used in this research. Hence
Link181 is used as the replacement due to its similar characteristics but bending
resisting behaviour. Figure 4-8 illustrates overlaying of link and shell elements
clearly. As shown, a four node shell element consists of four nodes which is
Page | 94
combined with six Link181 elements on top. The members are common in corner
nodes and since both elements do not resist bending and have three degree of
freedom, essentially they are bonded in the corner joints hence they move together
as the structure deflects. It means that Link181 and Shell181 can only move
translationally along the axis of the global coordinate system.
Link180
Node2
Node1 Shell181
Node3
y
x Node4
Figure ‎4-8: Overlaying of Link181 and Shell181 elements
4.5. Modelling of a clamped rectangle model:
After progression of the analysis procedure, a rectangle model is analysed with
and without over laying link elements in ANSYS. Rectangle model is chosen since
it has a regular shape and all the nodes and elements creation can be modelled
automatically through APDL. The advantage of the automatic coding is more
highlighted when the load path determination process is added to the analysis
since the proposed load path procedure needs to be operated iteratively in a

Page | 95
number of loops which depends on the element size. Essentially the shell model is
modelled without overlaid link element first due to the possibility of convergent
issue then overlaid shell and link element is analysed together. The thickness of
the plate is the same as circular model with 4 mm and the width and height of the
shade is 2.4 m . The cross section area of the link elements is considered to be
1 .
Materials characteristics used in the current analysis is similar to the previous
model and are adapted from the values used in the sail construction industry
(CyTec, 2011), woven polyester (WP) sailcloth with and Young’s Modulus of 873
MPa and a Poisson’s ratio of 0.3.
4.5.2. Element
The elements for modelling of shell are chosen to be Shell181 due to its ability
which was explored earlier in this chapter. The membrane model in this research
does not resist any bending hence membrane only attribute is picked through the
pre-possessing. The size of the element is selected through element length-
convergence which is depicts in the Figure 4-9. The model consists of 1600 nodes
and 6 cm of length in each element and 4641 shell elements all together.
Page | 96
1.80
1.75
1.70
1.65
Z deflection (m) 1.60
1.55
1.50
1.45
1.40
1.35
1.30
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6
Element size (𝑚)
Figure ‎4-9: Shell element size convergence for the rectangle plate
Figure ‎4-10: Shell elements distribution
Link181 is selected as the overlaying elements owing to its compatibility with
membrane attribute of the shell elements. The nodes in the Link181 have DOF to
move translationally in 𝑥 and 𝑦 and 𝑧 directions. The size of the links is identical to
the size of one side of a Shell181 element. The meshing pattern is in such a way
that between every pair of nodes in shell element a link member is overlaid. This
Page | 97
means that there are 6 link members in a shell element in vertical, horizontal and
diagonal directions. This meshing type can let the load flows over the shell layers
as well as in the edges of the elements. Generating the link elements as explained
earlier creates 3120 Link181 elements in the model. Figure 4-11 shows the
meshing pattern.
Figure ‎4-11: Link element distribution
4.5.3. Boundary conditions and loading
This model is a clamped rectangle which is fixed in all DOF in the nodes in the
edges (Figure 4-12). All other inner nodes are free to move in all x , y and z
directions.
Page | 98
‎ -12: Rectangle boundary condition

Figure 4
Modelling of the pre-tension is performed with the translational stiffening of the
membrane in 𝑥 and 𝑦 directions in the 1st step of the loading step with 5
enforced displacement in the vertical and horizontal edges respectively. In order to
stretch the membrane in the 𝑧 direction a point load of 1.3𝐸-3 N is assumed to be
acting in the normal direction to the plate at the centroid of the circle after the pre
tensioning process while it is removed from the boundary conditions later during
the analysis. And finally 10𝑃𝑎 is ramping on the membrane through the rest of the
analysis.
4.5.4. The solution
The static structural analysis through geometric nonlinear analysis is performed in
ANSYS. The simulation is performed twice, with and without overlaid link elements.
Starting with shell element only, and then with shell and link elements. Similarly,
Page | 99
circular plate, large displacement and stress stiffening are also used to resist large
deformation in the structures. The analysis is performed though 12 load steps and
11 sub steps with Newton-Raphson iteration method. This model due to its
boundary condition is easily solved very quickly. However, for more unstable
models more iteration is needed.
4.5.5. Post processing without overlaying link elements
As Figure 4-13 displays, the maximum 𝑧 deflection occurs in the centre and it is
expected to be symmetrical due to the geometry and boundary condition.
‎ -13: Z deflection (m)

Figure 4
It is evident that deflection of the membrane is greatest in the centre of the
rectangle which results in the typical shape of clamped shades. Along the edges of
the model there are some negative deflections; this indicates that wrinkling or
Page | 100
rippling of the membrane is occurring at these points. This is generally due to the
translation of the material towards these edges and the inability of the nylon to
resist bending and wrinkling. Also the stress distribution can be found in
Figure 4-14. Similarly to the circular membrane stress in the 𝑧 direction can be
found significant compare to the other directions and hence Von Mises stress also
gets affected.
4.5.6. Post processing with overlaying link elements
Compare to the model without overlaid link element, it is expected that deflection
can be affected by overlaying element significantly. 𝑧 deflection is decreased down
from 1.7 m to 0.16 m and also Von Mises stress in the membrane is lowered from
1039 Pa to 11.63 Pa . (Figure 4-15, Figure 4-16). This can highlight the effect of
carbon fibre into the sail and tension structures performance. In this specific model,
Page | 101
the plate with link element can bear 1000𝑃𝑎 while the plate without link element
can only bear 10𝑃𝑎 at its maximum wind load capacity.
Figure ‎4-15: Z deflection (m)
Page | 102
4.5.7. Determining the load paths
Determination of load paths is carried out as part of post processing by
implementing the APDL algorithm discussed in the Chapter 3. The determination of
the load paths consists of elimination of link elements through an iterative
procedure. This technique involves modelling of the internal force in the link
elements as a discrete network of forces. This network of forces is constrained to
lie within the shell elements. The time for elimination is dependent on the
complexity of the structure and the meshing pattern. The elimination procedure of
the rectangle plate with diagonal overlaid link element took seven hours and thirty
minutes over 700 iterations to reach the final pattern. The computational time is
based on the regular desktop with 3.00 𝐺𝐻𝑧 CPU and 4.00 𝐺𝐵 RAM and hard drive
of 150𝐺𝐵.
It must be highlighted that the elimination method as explained earlier does not
delete or simply removes the selected element from the solution domain while the
Young’s modulus is reduced to half of the magnitude of its initial value. The benefit
of this method is that stress singularity never occurs in the solution procedure due
to elimination of one element from the solution system. However, the reduced
elements do not play significant role in the load transfer.
Figure 4-17 provides information about how the links elements are remained in the
model after the elimination process. The starting point of modulus is from the
elements in the boundaries as they carry the load since all their nodes are fixed in
all DOF. Then the process kills the horizontal elements in the top and bottom sides
Page | 103
as well as vertical elements in the right and left sides. As the process continues,
two strips of link elements connecting the top to bottom and left side to right side
remain in the structure. These two strips of link elements are joints in the centre of
the shade. The connections are where all the forces that act on and within the
tension structure come together.
Figure ‎4-17: load path distribution in the plate
It can be observed from Figure 4-17, that the force has the higher magnitude along
the edges and is reduced towards the centre. This means that if the elimination
process continues, the elements in the areas coloured in yellow are the latest
members to be eliminated from the solution domain. The line of links elements
represents the state of stress in a linear pattern in the shade. If the loads upon the
Page | 104
shade are discretised into a set of point loads then the line of links can construct a
cross polygon. The remaining result can be compared with the load path for a
masonry dome considered as a series of lune shaped pieces presented in
(O’Dwyer, 1999) (Figure 4-18).
‎ -18: load path for a masonry dome (O’Dwyer, 1999)

Figure 4
4.6. Modelling of a corner fixed rectangle model:
Another rectangle shade with more complicated boundary conditions is considered
as the second numerical example. Under this circumstance, the rectangle is only
fixed in the corners while the other nodes are free to move in translational degree
of freedom. These boundary conditions represents a type of shade sails which is
tensioned from the corners and usually are perfect solution for shading any
outdoor area including pools, patios, playgrounds and schools. The dimensions are
similarity to the previous model with 2.4 m lengths in each side, 4 as thickness
and 1 cm2 as the cross section area for the reinforcement.
Page | 105
The material of the sail is woven polyester with 873 MPa Young’s modulus and 0.3
Poisson’s ratio. The carbon fibre resins are modelled with Young’s modulus of 150
GPa and Poisson ratio of 0.3.
4.6.2. Element
Due to the fact that increasing the number of elements may increase the solution
time, the Shell181 element length of 12 cm (the element size is two times of the
clamped circular model) is considered to minimise the modelling time. Figure 4-9
can verifies that increasing the element length would not lead into major difference
in the 𝑧 deflection. However it can decrease the solution time by approximate half
of the initial. So this model consists of 400 nodes and 380 Shell181 elements and
total number of 1482 overlaid Link181 elements (Figure 4-19).
‎ -19: Link elements distribution

Figure 4
Page | 106
The model is pre-tensioned in 𝑥 and 𝑦 directions in the 1st step of the loading step
with 5 enforced displacement in the corners. In order to stretch the membrane
in 𝑧 direction, a point load of 1.3𝐸-3 N is assumed to be acting in the normal
direction to the plate at the centroid of the circle after the pre tensioning process
while it is removed from the boundary conditions later during the analysis. And
finally 10𝑃𝑎 is ramping on the membrane through the rest of the analysis.
Figure ‎4-20: Node distribution
Due to the complexity of the structure under the defined loading condition
convergence problem still appeared. Avoiding this issue, line search is activated in
the model due to the fact that 1- Structure is force-loaded and 2- oscillatory
convergence patterns are observed in the cumulative iteration graph. Stabilizer
which is the advanced feature of ANSYS, is implemented since convergence issue
due to an unstable problem is usually results from a large displacement for small
Page | 107
load increments. Nonlinear stabilization technique can help achieve convergence.
Nonlinear stabilization can be thought of as adding artificial dampers to all of the
nodes in the system. Any degree of freedom that tends to be unstable has a large
displacement causing a large damping force. This force reduces displacements at
the degree of freedom so that stabilization can be achieved and these techniques
may support gaining convergent solution despite of large deflection in the model.
4.6.4. Determining the load paths
Possible load paths in the corner fixed rectangle are achieved by implementing the
algorithm explained earlier, in the post processing. As it is evident in Figure 4-21,
two straps bridge the corners oppositely and double symmetrical in the pattern
shows the final load path after 320 iterations.
‎ -21: Possible load path in the corner fixed rectangle

Figure 4
Page | 108
The lighter colours indicate the elements with more possibility of remaining in the
domain through the iterations. The pattern can be compared with groined vault
(O’Dwyer, 1999).
The groined vault is an intersection shell composed of four triangular pieces of
cylindrical shells and arranged in a cross form in such that it forms arches on each
sides (Figure 4-22). This is one of the most ancient of masonry arch structures and
still is used for underground water reservoirs of concrete without any reinforcing.
‎ -22: Alternative load paths for a groined vault (O’Dwyer, 1999)

Figure 4
A sample of the codes is given in Appendix.A.
4.7. Conclusion:
This chapter was a concise part of the application chapter in the final thesis and
aimed the variation of deflection and load path in shades, using woven polyester
as the main cloth and carbon fibre as the reinforcement resin. FE Analysis program
Page | 109
was used to complete the modelling through geometric nonlinear static analysis. In
order to verify the accuracy of the analysis, the final Z deflection was compared to
Timoshenko’s Theory of Shells and Plates. The possible load paths were obtained
through an iterative algorithm in ANSYS APDL in post processing by using overlaid
Link181 and Shell181 elements. The load paths obtained in the rectangle model
revealed that there are two possible strips in the shade, which can hold the
majority of the load caused by normal pressure. In the clamped rectangle model
two strips bridged the opposite sides while in the corner fixed model they
connected the corners and jointed in the centre of the shell. The procedure
described generates a system of tensile and compressive forces which can be
contained within a tension structure. Identifying the possible load paths leads to
understand how a structure is likely to support its load and let the designer to
decide with more confidence.
Page | 110
CHAPTER 5.
APPLICATION TO CRUISING
YACHT SAIL DESIGN
5.1. Introduction:
The development of modern sailing boats has been based almost entirely on the
cooperative efforts of enthusiastic skippers, designers and sail-makers, with very
slight contribution from scientists and technologists and using just basic scientific
principles (Beck et al., 2009). In recent years, urgent and strong requests for
improved performance, mostly for racing yachts, have guided the interest and the
attention of the scientific community in the optimisation of sail performance and
design approach. High performance sails have a number of characteristics such as
light weight and high strength which are rarely studied in the literature. This
chapter focuses on the importance of the quantitative evaluation of the sail loads
and studies how these loads contribute to the improvement of the performance of a
Chapter5Application To Cruising Yacht Sail Design
sailboat through the development of an algorithm for aiding sail design. The
objective of this chapter is to implement an integrated design system, which
supplies load path design features in a sail configuration. The major achievement
is the development of an integrated numerical method, which determines possible
load paths under distributed load and the consequent deformed sail-shape. Hence,
the outcome of the research improves sail performance and design of new sails.
The scope of the current study is to apply a load path determination approach to
sail design, to define the possible carbon fibre reinforcement directions for
laminated sails for any given shape using a numerical algorithm, this will lead to an
improvement in the sail design from a structural point of view.
5.2. Sail as a membrane structure
A shell structure is usually defined as a surface structure that supports only tensile
and compressive stress in which bending moment is negligible. Such structural
action is termed as “membrane action”. A shell carries normal load by product of
curvature and membrane stress. In an ideal case where the thickness tends to
zero, the material can only resist tension a shell is termed a membrane. Textile
and laminate structures such as boat sails are good examples of membranes. Boat
sails have an infinite number of kinematic degree of freedom. A sail of elastic
material may deform linearly or non-linearly depending on the patterns of loading
and constraints. However, in most cases deformation occurs such that the solution
results into non-linear response (Heppel, 2002).
Page | 112
5.3. Finite element model of the sail
Shape deformation of the sail system should be considered in order to predict the
correct load path determination in sail. However, the shape deformation in general,
depends on seaming and rig tension. Currently, effect of elastic deformation is not
well understood since modelling effect of elastic deformation is complicated (Yoo
and Kim, 2006). This work, however, has made an attempt to predict the deformed
shape of the sail in the static structural analysis with some simplified assumption
on the loading which will be covered thoroughly.
5.3.1. Definition of the geometry
Initially, it is necessary to introduce some terms that will be used later in this
chapter to describe components of the sails. Figure 5-1 illustrates the components
of a mainsail. Prior to simulating the boat sail, following assumption and condition
is made:
 The surface of sail is not a rigid membrane and can be deformed.
 The incident angle of apparent wind is set to 90º with respect to the mast.
 The speed of wind is assumed 25 knots.
Page | 113
‎ -1: Components of a boat sail, adopted from (Jazzmanian, 2006)

Figure 5
In this chapter a similar procedure of analysis to Chapter 4 with application to
cruising boat sail is presented. Static analysis will be performed in ANSYS APDL
as the finite element package. Due to the fact that sails behave similar to very thin
shells, Shell181 element is an appropriate choice to be used in the simulation
process. Shell181 elements are popular in membrane analysis because they
Page | 114
provide the most degree of freedom of common element types. The sail cloth is
discretised into finite elements with a set of quadrilateral membrane elements with
four nodes. These elements withstand all external forces through tension but they
cannot withstand bending moments. However, these elements are not easy to use
particularly in static analysis since they can distort easily. In this case the bending
moment caused by transverse load must be equilibrated in the nonlinear analysis
due to the large deflection in the plate. In order to satisfy the enforced conditions in
the membrane, distributing the pressure through number of load steps, pre-
tensioning, stiffening of the membrane and advance feature of ANSYS using
Stabilizer and Line search are implemented. An FEA static structural analysis is
conducted on a three dimensional rectangle model with 5.61 m mast length and
2.2 m foot length.
Table 5-1 depicts some common materials for most boat sails. The materials used
are reasonably linear in their tensile stress-strain behaviour (Heppel, 2002;
Blicblau et al., 2008). Woven polyesters can be used for sail cloth and carbon fibre
may be considered for batten as well as reinforcement purposes.
‎ -1: Some common materials used for sails

Table 5
Component Material 𝐸(MPa) Dimensions ( ) Thickness( )
Sail cloth Woven polyester 873 0.3 5.61*2.2 4
Batten carbon fibre 150000 0.3 0.01*0.01 N/A
reinforcement carbon fibre 150000 0.3 0.007*0.007 N/A
Page | 115
5.3.3. Element
FE mesh generation is carried out by using FEM modeller. This strategy is used to
set a specified number of divisions on the boundary curves in order to have
quadrilateral elements with a side particularly coincident with mast and foot. The
quadrilateral elements are the proper choice to model yacht sails built by
composite materials with stiffeners since the elements in the side has been
assumed to be origin of the a local reference. They can define the composite
mechanical properties simplification both in design and realization procedures
(Cappello and Mancuso, 2001). Quadrilateral isotropic Shell181, similar to the
elements used earlier in Chapter 4 is implemented for sail modelling due to the
reasons were explained earlier. It is worth mentioning that the elements do not
resist any bending moment since “membrane only” is activated. The element
formulation is based on Midlin’s theory where ANSYS codes reduce “locking” effect
(Zienkiewicz and Taylor, 2005). It should be noted that sails are modelled without
considering their effective shape, but simply like shells to which loads are applied,
stressing the structure by means of foot, mast and shrouds. Particular care is spent
in finding a suitable mesh which could to achieve reliable results with spending
reasonable duration of computational time. The final mesh shown in Figure 5-2 is
with 75 elements after performing suitable convergence analysis. This is in
agreement with (Cappello and Mancuso, 2001).
Page | 116
‎ -2: Meshing configuration

Figure 5
In order to determine the appropriate level of element refinement, the maximum 𝑧
displacement is plotted against number of division.
50
45
40
Z displacement(mm)
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Number of division
Figure ‎5-3: 𝑧 displacement against number of division
Page | 117
As it is observed in Figure 5-3 the deflection converges to a value of 47 mm as the
size of the element is reduced. Mesh loads should be refined carefully but this
increases the time of analysis (Figure 5-4). Therefore, time of analysis and
accuracy of the model needs to be compromised. This compromise is very
essential since in cases such as when the load paths algorithm is implemented;
the process is run over 1000 iterations over 25 hours.
560
510
460
410
360
Time(S)
310
260
210
160
110
60
4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Number of division
‎ -4: Analysis time against number of divisions

Figure 5
It should be highlighted that computational time is for the analysis performed on a
desktop computer with 3.00 GHz CPU and 4.00 GB RAM and hard drive of 150 GB .
Generally sails are modelled in such that the translational and rotational degrees of
freedoms along the foot of the main sail where the sail is connected to the boom
will be suppressed. This suppression fixes all the displacement in these regions.
Page | 118
Along the mast, the translational degrees of freedom must be inhibited. For the
head sail, the point of attachment of the foot to the rig must be constrained. The
leech of the main and head sail must be allowed to move freely to induce a
geometric twist due to the aerodynamic loading and the mast is assumed to be
rigid during the structural calculations. Due to the complexity of the simulation
through static structural analysis, some simplification is carried out in the boundary
conditions modelling which will be covered thoroughly. Boundary condition of the
sail mainly consists of four steps in as illustrated in Figure 5-5:
Boundary conditions
Nodal supports Stiffening Pressure ramping
In-plane stiffening Out-plane stiffening
‎ -5: General boundary condition procedure

Figure 5
Prior to applying any pressure to the sail, the cloth must be stiff enough to resist
membrane bending under the wind load. Thus, two scenarios are considered
(Figure 5-6): 1- stretching the membrane which represents the pre-tensioning of
the sail in installation stage and 2- stiffening of the membrane in normal direction
which is implemented to overcome convergence problems in the ANSYS solution.

Page | 119
Stretching is applied in the plane of the membrane in x and y directions at the
foot, mast and leech. The edge of the sail at the foot is pre-strained by 1 in the
downward 𝑦 direction, the edge of the sail at the mast is displaced 2.82 in
positive 𝑥 direction and the leech is displaced with -1.3 in 𝑥 direction and -
2.91 in 𝑦 direction (Cappello and Mancuso, 2001). Out-plane stiffening is
obtained by applying a uniform pressure of 65E-14 𝑃𝑎 to the centroid elements of
the sail elements to overcome the divergence issue in the solution (Figure 5-6).
In- plane stiffening
Out- plane stiffening
Figure ‎5-6: stiffening of the sail
It is followed by a ramp uniform pressure to the entire sail cloth uniformly. The
pressure represents wind load and is considered to be constant and remained
constant during the procedures. Essentially, the wind load is applied gradually
Page | 120
through the analysis to the model since ramp increment of pressure helps the
analysis to converge in each load step. The pressure of 65 Pa is applied in 11 load
steps and 38 sub steps. The pressure is obtained from Equation 5-1 indicates
maximum dynamic pressure.
𝑞 Equation ‎5-1
where 𝑞 is the maximum dynamic pressure, is the air density in the temperature
of +25 and is the summation of boat and wind velocities (25 knots). The
ramping history for the pressure depicts in Figure 5-7:
60
50
Pressure(Pa)
40
30
20
10
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Loading step number
‎ -7: Pressure ramping graph

Figure 5
As discussed earlier, simplification is essential not only to overcome the complexity
of the analysis but also for better understanding of the behaviour of boat sail in
different boundary conditions along with their effects on load path determination.
As the initial trial, the presence of battens and shrouds and other structural
Page | 121
elements of the sail rig are neglected from the analysis and the exterior edges are
fully fixed and then the membrane is stretched. This implies that there would be no
degree of freedoms in the nodes coincides with these sides. However, there is free
movement for all other interiors nodes in all allowable DOF. Due to the necessity
for large deformation in the sail simulation, analysis must be performed with
geometric nonlinearity throughout some trial modelling to estimate the deflection
caused by pressure loading. The non-linear system of equations relating the
displacements to the force field is advanced to a steady state by a multiple loading
step process that incrementally adds the wind load while obtaining a converged
displacement field for each step. Wrinkling of the structure, which is an important
consideration especially around the leading edge (luff) and at the sail tip, is not
anticipated by this model. Therefore, a large deformation algorithm which allows
for wrinkling models will be included at a later stage.
5.3.5. Results and Post processing
Figure 5-8 illustrates the final result for the 𝑧 displacement normal to the plane of
the sail. It is obvious that the maximum displacement occurs in the centre of gravity
of the sail. The displacement in z direction decreases towards the edges of the sail
where the nodes are fully constrained. In some regions the displacement is
negative indicating that wrinkling behaviour is predicted at those points.
Page | 122
‎ -8: 𝑧 deflection
Figure 5
5.4. Load path determination
To obtain the possible reinforcement paths, overlaying meshing method is used.
Due to the fact that load path algorithm is mainly based on the boundary
conditions; variety of load path would be expected through different analysis. In the
following sections determination of load path is carried out based on different
boundary conditions which will be explained separately.
5.4.1. Overlaid elements
To determine the possible load paths, Link180 elements are overlaid on the
Shell181 elements. Mesh generation needs to follow the previously defined pattern
Page | 123
(explained in Chapter 4). Link members are linked to the shell elements in the
outer edges and in the diagonal orientation. Figure 5-9 and Figure 5-10 show how
link elements are placed on the shell elements.
Figure ‎5-9: Overlaid link 180 elements
Figure 5-10 which is a zoom-in section from the entire sail model, visualizes how
Link180 element is connected and lie down on Shell181 diagonally.
Shell181 element
Link180 element
Figure ‎5-10: overlaying of link and shell elements
After setting up the link elements in the model, the evolutionary algorithm is
allowed to iterate for 50 times. The resulting pattern of links can be found in
Figure 5-11.
Page | 124
(a) (b)
‎ -11: Link elements remaining after the 50 iterations

Figure 5
Studying the generated paths reveals that they mainly connect the mast to the
leech and the foot similar to the expected pattern for shade cloths restrained at the
boundaries. The paths expected in sails are indicated by the black lines showing
the carbon fibre tapes (Figure 5-12). The final sail design should derive its stability
from the carbon fibre paths. The number of these paths must be adequate and
accurate enough to make the design far from instability failure. As Figure 5-12
depicts the population of the carbon fibres are much higher than found in
Figure 5-11. The paths obtained by the numerical algorithm do not reflect paths
mainly due to three reasons:
 Boundary condition in the real sail structures differ from the boundary
conditions used in this model
Page | 125
 Load path determination in this configuration is limited to the paths defined
by link element in only diagonal and boundaries of the shell elements. There
would be some paths in the sail which do not conform to this limitation thus
meshing needs to be extended to the overpopulation method defined for
trusses in Chapter 3
 The effect of battens and shroud was neglected
‎ -12: layouts for mainsails (Fallow, 1996)

Figure 5
In a real sail as depicted in Figure 5-12, the leech is free to move and there is no
constraints limiting the movement of the membrane in this side. Since there is no
limitation caused by clamping edges, boundary conditions inclusion of effects from
battens and shrouds should be more studied in detail.
Page | 126
5.4.2. Effect of boundary conditions on load paths determination
Many parameters can affect the final link distribution. For better understanding of
these parameters they should be included in the modelling separately. One of the
significant parameters is existence of battens which can support the main sail cloth
in the normal direction. Usually four to five battens are included in the sail,
horizontally normal to the mast, depending on the size of the main sail. In the
current study, four equal spaced battens will be considered.
Besides, adding battens to the model affects both the mesh in the main cloth, and
the generation of link elements. Since the main cloth is divided into five different
sections more regular patterns of mesh with quadrangular shell elements can be
generated. Figure 5-13 demonstrates sample element distribution to incorporate
battens in the model:
Figure ‎5-13: Shell element distribution
Page | 127
Battens physically presents larger cross-sectional area than the carbon fibre
reinforcing tape in boat sails. In this model the cross section area of 100 mm2 is
chosen for the batten while the links representing the carbon fibre tape are given a
cross-sectional area of 49 mm2 . Battens are modelled with beam elements which
withstand bending moment. They can remain until the end of the analysis and
should not be removed from the solution domain. Figure 5-14 shows the relative
size of battens and links in the model.
Carbon fibre tape
Batten
Figure ‎5-14: visualization of batten
Due to the great number of analysis with different structural factors, a summary of
boundary conditions for better understanding is provided in Table 5-2 which will be
covered thoroughly in the following sections.
‎ -2: Summary of boundary conditions

Table 5
Attempt constraint Mesh Tension load (𝑁) Shroud (𝑁)

generation
method
Leech Foot Mast Corners Head Clew Tack Leech Mast
1 Free Free X, Y ,Z Full Normal
2 Free Free Free Full Overpopulation 98
3 Free Free Free Full Overpopulation 98 98
4 Free Free Free Full Overpopulation 98 98 1.5 1.5
5 Free Free Free Full Overpopulation 98 98 1.5 59
6 Free X, Y , Z X and Y Full Overpopulation 98 98 1.5 59
Page | 128
 Attempt 1
The new boundary conditions free the nodes in leech and foot to move in any
allowed direction, while, they are fixed to move only rotationally on the edge at the
mast. The sail is fixed at the head and clew as well as at the tack in all DOF. It is
advised to compare 𝑧 displacement in the model with new boundary conditions
since meshing pattern changes. As it is expected, maximum normal deflection
(along the pressure application) from the centre of gravity in earlier model move to
the middle of the leech since no constraints limited the nodes in the related zones
and the nodes are free to move in all DOF. While it still has the minimum
magnitude in the corners and at the mast since nodes are fixed in all translational
degrees of freedom. The shell element distribution and z displacement can be
viewed in Figure 5-15:
‎ -15: 𝑧 displacement contours

Figure 5
Page | 129
Implementing the load path determination algorithm produce the paths plotted in
Figure 5-16. Figure 5-16 (a) depicts how boundary conditions are applied to nodes
in the model and Figure 5-16 (b) shows how load path directions are affected by
the imposed boundary condition and how are the load path patterns.
Figure 5-16 explains how the load travels between the head and clew/ foot. It is
expected that in real sail most of the forward thrust of the sail is applied to the clew
and push on the mast through the boom. The patterns in the links reflect this path
for the load from the sail (Figure 5-16). Nevertheless, the directions of the paths
are restricted to be parallel to the edges and diagonals of shell elements in the
mesh. Hence more paths would be observed if this restriction is eliminated .So an
over populating pattern of link elements is considered in the following analysis.
(a) (b)
Figure ‎5-16: (a) Mesh generation and boundary conditions (b) Load paths defined by the link removal
algorithm.
Page | 130
 Attempt 2
The link elements included in this initial model are shown in Figure 5-17. In the set
up stage, the sail in the head is tensioned with additional cable force representing
pre-tensioning that can be applied when the sail is raised. Similar forces can be
applied to the clew and the tack. These forces are added gradually in different
attempts to investigate the change in load path patterns in detail. A 10 N force is
added to the head corner from the tension shrouds cables for this purpose.
‎ -17: Model with over populated links.

Figure 5
The result of the model in Figure 5-18 indicates that adding tensioning cable effect
in the sail head introduces a force that flows downward from the head to the foot
and generating more paths compare to the previous analysis. In this design the
wind load travels from head to clew as it transfer shear stress in the sail. The loads
Page | 131
need to cause failure of the model depends on the boundary conditions and shape
of the sail and the point where load applied. This dependency of sail strength upon
boundary conditions and carbon fibre paths is an advantage since if a scale model
of a sail is stable, the full scale structure would also be stable and as a result the
computational time can be reduced affectedly.
(a) (b)
Figure ‎5-18: load path with force in the head
 Attempt 3
In third attempt, only the effect of different combination of the tensioning cables in
the head and in the clew is investigated. The result arising from these changes is
illustrated in Figure 5-19:
Page | 132
(a) (b)
Figure ‎5-19: load path with force in the head and clew
In spite of adding the tension cable in the clew, the improvement is insignificant
although there are some concentration of remaining links in the head and transfer
of load to the clew. From these results, it is realized that the ideal pattern for
carbon fibre is needed to consist some straight patterns from head to foot to
transfer the load on the sail. Yet, effect of the shrouds in the battens has not been
studied. These tension cables loads are introduced to the sail at the ends of the
battens to control the shape of the sail which possibly affect the load path
determinations (Figure 5-20). Similarly, it is expected to have more patterns
appeared in the model by applying the mentioned boundary condition.
Page | 133
‎ -20: Shrouds in the sail (McDoon, 2004)

Figure 5
 Attempt 4
As the extent of force in shrouds is unknown and there is no information available
to determine the tension force caused by ropes, the reaction forces in the clew and
tack is calculated from the model. Then wards 10% of these magnitudes would be
added to leech and mast to model the shrouds effects. The reaction forces in the
supports calculated in ANSYS are listed in Table 5-3:
Table ‎5-3: Reactions and shrouds forces
𝐹 (𝑁) 𝐹 (𝑁) 𝐹 (𝑁)
Clew 12.269 8.645 0.051

Tank 302.48 -510.79 -13.273
Shrouds in leech 1.2269 0.8645 0.0051
Shrouds in mast 30.248 -51.079 -1.3273
Application of the load on the battens can be found by cable forces in the locations
as plotted in Figure 5-21.
Page | 134
‎ -21: Shrouds location

Figure 5
Since there is no certainty about the magnitude of the cable force in the sail, two
scenarios are considered:
 Identical value for both sides of mast and leech
 Different value for mast and leech according to the table above
From the first scenario, magnitude of cable is identical in both sides, Figure 5-22.
These cable forces need to be distributed into the membrane representing the sail.
Some links can be seen at the corners where the forces are applied.
Page | 135
(1) (2)
Figure ‎5-22: cable reaction with identical magnitude
In the second scenario, shrouds with different reaction forces value is applied to
the sail (Figure 5-23). As it was expected more link elements remain in the model
when the leech and mast cable forces are increased. The links present a similar
pattern to the carbon fibre reinforcement in the construction of boat sails. It is
therefore expected that the boundary conditions are very close to the real
structural conditions encountered in practice. A well-formed laminated yacht sail
are those who will not fail under loading. Therefore the sail stability under the wind
load with combination of different boundary condition depends on the new lines of
thrust which can still be continued within the design.
Page | 136
(1) (2)
Figure ‎5-23: cable reaction with different magnitude
 Attempt 5
The final boundary conditions are in such that all the nodes in the foot are fixed to
move in, x , y and z directions while those in the mast are fixed in x and y only and
all nodes in the leech are free to move in all allowable DOF (Shankaran, 2005).
The effect of shrouds differs from leech to mast where they experience higher
reaction forces (Figure 5-24) and the membrane bears 98 N from the tensioning
cable in the head and tack. The final boundary condition and result and from the
load path method can be found in Figure 5-25:
Page | 137
Figure ‎5-24: Boundary conditions Figure ‎5-25: Final possible load paths
In the final model a new pattern of links reveals more details of cruising yacht sails
carbon fibres. The lines of resins are obtained as a series of mainly straight lines.
This network of lines represents the network of force in the sail under loading
conditions and identify of how the structure is likely to support its load. The
accuracy with which model can model the forces in the structure in upon an ideal
meshing patterns and meshing density, the denser the mesh, the more accurate
the results. Nevertheless, due to the some limitations such as their manufacturing
cost and complexity (neither of them have been considered in this study) these
types of patterns might not be practical. However the validation of the method is
examined by finding pointing vectors which was discussed in Chapter 3 in the truss
structures. These pointing vectors then are numerically found in the sail for number
of nodes. (For more details it can be referred to Appendix.B)

Page | 138
5.5. Conclusion:
In this chapter, load path theory was extended to the application of cruising boat
sail. Uniform distributed pressure representing wind load with speed of 20 knots
perpendicular to the mast was applied to the sail and the 𝑧 deflection was
calculated through the static structural analysis. Due to the large deflection, the
analysis was carried out through geometric nonlinear with implementation of
advance features in the FEA package ANSYS such as stabilizer and line search
for force convergence. The results were validated against the results in the
literature. Load paths algorithm suggested in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 were
implemented in boat sail application. The results of numerical and computational
implemented methods in the current research were comparable to the
experimental use of carbon fibre resin in the industry via six different attempts. It
was found out that boundary conditions affect the final load path directions
significantly and a thorough research on the structural factors was conducted.
Page | 139
CHAPTER 6.
CONCLUSION
6.1. Summary of findings
In structural design, determination of the load path is considered as an essential
element. It provides the designer with insight into how the structure is performing
its primary function of transferring load from the point of application to the supports.
This thesis attempted to investigate the application of load path algorithms to
define trajectories for placement of reinforcing fibres in membrane tension
structures.
The first objective was to integrate existing load path plotting algorithms into the
FEA package ANSYS though the development of new FORTRAN codes. Some
applications were studied to identify load path properties in a rectangle solution
domain. It concluded that typical patterns observed for the paths can be classified
into five distinct categories: 1-pure tension, 2-pure compression, 3-pure bending,
Chapter6Conclusion
4-cantilever bending and 5-simply supported bending. Load paths were then
studied in truss structures by employing overpopulation of the domain by link
members and implementing a structural evolutionary method for the elimination of
the elements. It was observed that this method tended to result in a statically
determinant design and terminated when the removal of the next member created
a mechanism.
With regards to the second objective, a method of visualizing of load paths in
membrane structures was obtained by overlaying of link and shell elements in
ANSYS. The analysis was extended to geometric nonlinear analysis due to the
large deflection experienced by shade sail and wind sail structures under uniform
static pressure. The main load bearing members in the structure were identified by
removing elements from the domain using an evolutionary method. The design
procedure was iterated for a number of loops by slowly deactivating inefficient
elements by a scalar criterion in an algorithm written in the ANSYS programming
language. The integrity of this design technique was verified by the development of
promising patterns for clamped and corner fixed rectangles. In the clamped model,
two straps connected the opposite sides and met each other in the centroid to
essentially create a cross pattern. In the corner fixed model, the opposite corners
were tied with the diagonal links in the final structure.
The final objective was to apply the algorithms to cruising yacht sails. The results
presented have similarities between the paths defined by this method and the
current carbon fibre trajectories implemented in the current sail designs.
Additionally, it was concluded that boundary condition can affect the final result
Page | 141
Chapter6Conclusion
considerably. Finally pointing vectors were calculated at the element centroid for a
number of elements in the main cloth and plotted on the boat sail. These pointing
vectors revealed connections between the fibre paths created by the proposed
algorithm and the load path vectors studied previously.
This research program for a Master by Research Thesis has focussed on the
development of algorithms using the commercial finite element system ANSYS.
These included FORTRAN programs that interfaced with ANSYS by the export of
results from ANSYS and the return of new link elements to plot vectors and
contours. The evolutionary algorithm used the programming interface in ANSYS
Classic. Both these implementations were achieved and successfully
demonstrated on simple structures.
The application to defining reinforcement patterns in shade sail and wind sail
structures was limited by the time allowed for this thesis. The results from these
analyses appear qualitatively correct and encourage further work to undertaken. It
is recommended that work commence with a detailed investigation of the loads
and boundary conditions experienced by these structures.
One interesting outcome of the research has been the development of procedures
to plot load paths in simple trusses. The truss in Figure 6.1 has the minimum
number of axial force members before the truss becomes a mechanism. However
not all members are participating in the transfer of the Y-force from Node 3 to the
support. For structures supporting multiple load cases the identification of the path
for one of the applied loads is not achieved by simply optimizing the structure. A
Page | 142
Chapter6Conclusion
subset of the members will in general be associated with the load transfer. Here
the remaining members are required to provide a path for the bending loads -
except member 24 which carries no load. This member is required to prevent the
hinge at Node 2 becoming a mechanism.
N4
1.414T
1.414C
(1) (1)
N1 N2 N3
1 1
‎ -1: 𝑦-Force load path in a simple truss.
Figure 6
6.2. Recommendations for Future Work
The recommendations arising from this work relate mainly to more in-depth
investigations of the applications that have been used to check the performance of
the algorithms. The recommendations are defined in the following list.
 The loads on the structures have been represented by constant pressure.
The design load cases for the shade sails will require a detailed study of
wind loads and will depend on the geometry of the sail. Probably the major
area that needs to be addressed in future work is the aerodynamics of both
the shade sails and the wind sails and the use of more representative
design loads.
Page | 143
Chapter6Conclusion
 The work completed showed that the load paths are also sensitive to the
boundary conditions applied to the structure. If future work is to focus on the
same sail structures an investigation of the correct boundary conditions to
apply to the sails is required.
 No attention has been paid to the wider design objectives including
manufacturing and cost constraints. A design requirement for the wind sails
would be the final aerodynamic shape of the sail. While the reinforcement
ensures the load enhancement near the supports does not cause failure,
away from the supports the fibres could help to control the shape of the sail.
These aspects should be considered in work that follows on from this
project.
Page | 144
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Zienkiewicz, O. C., Valliappan, S. and King, I. P. (1969). "Elasto-plastic solutions of
engineering problems ‘initial stress’, finite element approach." International Journal
for Numerical Methods in Engineering 1(1): 75-100.
Page | 150
APPEDNDIX.A
APDL codes for modelling, analysis

and load path determination in a corner
fixed rectangle membrane
fini
/clear
/title, Rectangle corner fixed membrane

/eshape, 1
! Change units to millimeter, miliNewton, second, kilogram, mega

Pascal...
Geometry set up
h1= 1 ! Cross section area of Link180

y1 = 150E3 ! Young modulus of link 180
h2 = 0.3 ! Thickness of membrane
y2 = 873 ! Young modulus of Shell 181
v2 = 0.30 ! Poisson ratio of membrane
Appendix.A
y3 = 75E3 ! Reduced Young modulus

v3 = 0.3 ! New Poisson ratio of membrane
L = 25 ! Length of the element
n=1000 ! Width length
m=1000 ! Height length
n_max = n/L
m_max = m/L
Pressure = 65E-03 ! Total pressure
! Nodes creation
/Prep7
*do,i,1,n_max
*do,j,1,m_max
n,,L*i,L*j,L*i*(L*i-1000)*L*j*(L*j-1000)/1E10
*enddo
*enddo
! Assigning elements Properties:

et,1,180
et,2,181
r,1,h1
r,2,h2
keyopt,2,1,1 ! 1 = membrane stiffness only
keyopt,2,3,0 ! 2 = Full integration
mp,ex,1,y1
mp,prxy,1,v1
mp,ex,2,y2
mp,prxy,2,v2
mp,ex,3,y3
mp,prxy,3,v3
mp,ex,4,y4
mp,prxy,3,v3
! Defining Link Elements:

*do,i,1,n_max-1
*do,j,1,m_max-1
e,(i-1)*m_max+j,(i-1)*m_max+j+1
e,(i-1)*m_max+j,i*m_max+j
e,(i-1)*m_max+j,i*m_max+j+1
e,(i-1)*m_max+j+1,i*m_max+j
*enddo
e,i*m_max,(i+1)*m_max
*enddo
*do,j,1,m_max-1
e,(n_max-1)*m_max+j,(n_max-1)*m_max+j+1
*enddo
Page | 152
Appendix.A
! Defining Shell elements:

TYPE, 2
MAT, 2
REAL, 2
ESYS, 0
SECNUM,
*do,i,1,n_max-1
*do,j,1,m_max-1
e,(i-1)*m_max+j,(i-1)*m_max+j+1,(i)*m_max+j+1,(i)*m_max+j
*enddo
*enddo
Boundary conditions
nsel,s,loc,x,L
nsel,a,loc,x,n_max*L
nsel,a,loc,y,L
nsel,a,loc,y,m_max*L
cm,nextr,node
nsel,s,loc,x,L
cm,nextr_x_L,node
nsel,s,loc,x,n_max*L
cm,nextr_x_r,node
nsel,s,loc,y,L
cm,nextr_y_B,node
nsel,s,loc,y,m_max*L
cm,nextr_y_T,node
! Local coordinate SYS in the

center
LOCAL,15,1,n/2+L/2,m/2+L/2,0, , , ,1,1,
csys,15
nsel,s,loc,x,0,1.5*L
cm,ncent,node
LOCAL,11,1,L,L,0, , , ,1,1,
LOCAL,12,1,m,m,0, , , ,1,1,
LOCAL,13,1,m,L,0, , , ,1,1,
LOCAL,14,1,L,n,0, , , ,1,1,
Csys,11
Page | 153
Appendix.A
nsel,s,loc,x,0,4*L
csys,12
nsel,a,loc,x,0,4*L
csys,13
nsel,a,loc,x,0,4*L
csys,14
nsel,a,loc,x,0,4*L
cm,ncorn,node
Csys,11
nsel,s,loc,x,0,L
csys,12
nsel,a,loc,x,0,L
csys,13
nsel,a,loc,x,0,L
csys,14
nsel,a,loc,x,0,L
cm,ncorn1,node
cmsel,,ncent
!Defining center element
ESLN,S,1
esel,r,type,,2
cm,ecent,elem
allsel
nplot
eplot
/user
fini
Save,modell,db ! Saving the geometry
Solution
/solu
antype,static
nlgeom,on ! (Non Linear geometric
solution)...
sstif,on ! Stress stiffening...
outres,all,all
! Constraining all DOFs and then redefine and stiffening the shell
time,1.0
nsubst,10,100,2
d,nextr,all
d,nextr_x_L,ux,-m_max*L/2000.0
d,nextr_x_r,ux,m_max*L/2000.0
d,nextr_y_B,uy,-n_max*L/2000.0
Page | 154
Appendix.A
d,nextr_y_T,uy,n_max*L/2000.0
allsel
solve
! Pressure on the center element
time,2.0
nsubst,10000,100000,10
sfe,ecent,,pres,,pressure
allsel
solve
! Fixing the translational DOF
time,3.0
nsubst,100,1000,1
d,nextr_x_L,ux,0
d,nextr_x_r,ux,0
d,nextr_y_B,uy,0
d,nextr_y_T,uy,0
allsel
solve
!remove constraints from the

exterior borders and fixing the
corners
time,4.0
nsubst,1000,10000,1
ddele,nextr_x_L,all
ddele,nextr_x_r,all
ddele,nextr_y_T,all
ddele,nextr_y_B,all
d,nextr,uz,0
d,ncorn,all
allsel
solve
time,5.0
nsubst,10000,100000,10
sfe,ecent,,pres,,pressure*1E-6
allsel
solve
! Ramping the Pressure on all shell

elements
Page | 155
Appendix.A
time,6.0
nsubst,1000000,100000000,10
esel,s,type,,2
sfe,all,,pres,,pressure*1E-10
allsel
solve
time,7.0
nsubst,1000000,100000000,10
esel,s,type,,2
allsel
solve
time,8.0
nsubst,1000000,100000000,10
esel,s,type,,2
allsel
solve
time,9.0
nsubst,1000000,100000000,10
esel,s,type,,2
allsel
solve
time,10.0
nsubst,1000000,100000000,10
esel,s,type,,2
allsel
solve
time,11.0
nsubst,1000000,100000000,10
esel,s,type,,2
sfe,all,,pres,,pressure
allsel
solve
Post Processing
! Plotting the displacement in z-

dir
/post1
set,last
/edge,,1
/dscale,,1
Page | 156
Appendix.A
plnsol,u,z
! Preparing etable for determining
of the internal force
etable,eras
esel,s,type,,1
etable,mforx,smisc,1
SMIN,Min,MFORX,MFORX,1,1,
SABS,1
ESORT,ETAB,Min,1,1, ,
*GET,MForVal,SORT,,Min
esel,s,etab,min,0,MForVal+0.01*Mforval,,1
cm,emin,elem
allsel
CMWRITE,emin,cm
Finish
!!<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<The complementary round>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>!!
*Do,ii,1,10
resume,modell,db
/input,emin,cm
/prep7
allsel
cmsel,s,emin
emodif,all,mat,3
allsel
Finish
/solu
antype,static
nlgeom,on ! (Non Linear geometric
solution)...
sstif,on ! Stress stiffening...
outres,all,all
! Constraining all DOFs and then
redefine and stiffening the shell
time,1.0
nsubst,10,100,2
d,nextr,all
d,nextr_x_L,ux,-m_max*L/2000.0
d,nextr_x_r,ux,m_max*L/2000.0
d,nextr_y_B,uy,-n_max*L/2000.0
d,nextr_y_T,uy,n_max*L/2000.0
allsel
solve
time,2.0
nsubst,10000,100000,10
sfe,ecent,,pres,,pressure
allsel
Page | 157
Appendix.A
solve
! Fixing the translational DOF
time,3.0
nsubst,100,1000,1
d,nextr_x_L,ux,0
d,nextr_x_r,ux,0
d,nextr_y_B,uy,0
d,nextr_y_T,uy,0
allsel
solve
!remove constraints from the

exterior borders and fixing the
corners
time,4.0
nsubst,1000,10000,1
ddele,nextr_x_L,all
ddele,nextr_x_r,all
ddele,nextr_y_T,all
ddele,nextr_y_B,all
d,nextr,uz,0
d,ncorn,all
allsel
solve
time,5.0
nsubst,10000,100000,10
sfe,ecent,,pres,,pressure*1E-6
allsel
solve
! Ramping the Pressure on all shell

elements
time,6.0
nsubst,1000000,100000000,10
esel,s,type,,2
allsel
solve
time,7.0
nsubst,1000000,100000000,10
esel,s,type,,2
allsel
solve
Page | 158
Appendix.A
time,8.0
nsubst,1000000,100000000,10
esel,s,type,,2
allsel
solve
time,9.0
nsubst,1000000,100000000,10
esel,s,type,,2
allsel
solve
time,10.0
nsubst,1000000,100000000,10
esel,s,type,,2
allsel
solve
time,11.0
nsubst,1000000,100000000,10
esel,s,type,,2
sfe,all,,pres,,pressure
allsel
solve
set,last
etable,eras
set,last
etable,eras
esel,s,type,,1
cmsel,r,emin
esel,inve
esel,r,type,,1
SABS,1
ESORT,ETAB,Min,1,1, ,
*GET,MForVal,SORT,,Min
esel,s,etab,mforx,-
ABS(3*MForVal+0.01*Mforval),ABS(3*MForVal+0.01*Mforval),,1
cmsel,a,emin
cm,emin,elem
allsel
CMWRITE,emin,cm
Finish
*Enddo
Page | 159
APPEDNDIX.B
Procedure for plotting pointing vectors

at nodes using sections to define an
average stress on the section at the
node.
In the last section of the thesis, plotting vectors and paths defined previously in
Chapter 3 is developed for truss structures. Procedure for plotting pointing vectors
at nodes using sections in regular grids to define an average stress on the section
at the node is explained. From the forces in the members average stresses
representing the load transfer is also calculated. The pointing vectors by internal
force in the member then iterated for numbers of nodes in the sail and it is found
out that it can be validated against the experimental carbon fibre path in industry.
Appendix.B
B.i Pointing vectors in regular grids:
The aim of this method is to focus on a node and use the forces in the members
and the dimensions of the grid to define average stresses representing the load
transfer. A four bay truss in a regular grid pattern with 2 Lx width and 2 Ly height
where node N i is in the centre is considered (Figure B. 1):
Lx
Ly
2 1 Ni
3 7
6
4 5
Figure B. 1: Regular grid truss
B.i.i. 𝑥-Path pointing vectors
x-path vectors can be identified from Equation B- 1 as explained in Chapter 3 from
load path theory:
𝑉 𝑗 Equation B- 1
where yx is the shear on a plane whose normal is in the 𝑦 direction, positive in the
positive 𝑥 direction and links carry only axial load. Then a cutting plane normal in 𝑥
direction can be formed as illustrated in Figure B. 2:
Page | 161
Appendix.B
F2
2
2 Ly Ly
α1
3 F3 Px
6
2
α2
4
6
𝐹 F4
2
Figure B. 2: Plane cut normal to X-direction
Then summation of forces acting on the node N i can be formulated as in Equation
B- 2:
∑𝐹 𝑃 𝐹 𝐹𝐶 𝑠 𝐹𝐶 𝑠 Equation B- 2
Hence, is the summation of force in 𝑥 direction over the length of the member
as formulated in Equation B- 3:
𝑃 𝐹 𝐹𝐶 𝑠 𝐹𝐶 𝑠
Equation B- 3
𝐿 𝐿
Once is found, can be calculated by forming a cutting plane with normal in
the 𝑦 direction by assuming cutting plane halves members 3 and 7 as depicted in
Figure B. 3 :
Page | 162
Appendix.B
3 6 7
𝐹4 𝐹
2
5 𝐹
𝐹
2
2
6
2
𝐹 6
6
Lx
Px
F3/2 F7/2
β2 β1
F4 F6
Figure B. 3: Plane cut normal to y-direction
can be calculated by division of force summation in 𝑦 direction by the length of
the member in Equation B- 4:
𝐹 𝐹
𝑃 𝐹𝐶 𝑠 𝐹𝐶 𝑠 Equation B- 4
𝐿 𝐿
B.i.ii. 𝑦-Path Pointing Vector
Similarly, 𝑦-path pointing vectors can be determined from load path theory as
Equation B- 5:
𝑉 𝑗 Equation B- 5
can be calculated (Equation B- 6) from formation of a plane, cut normal to 𝑦-
axis in Figure B. 4:
Page | 163
Appendix.B
4 6
𝐹 5 𝐹
2
2
𝐹
6
2
6
Lx
Py
γ1 γ2
F4 F6
F5
Figure B. 4: Plane cut normal to 𝑦 direction
𝑃 𝐹 𝐹𝐶 𝑠 𝐹𝐶 𝑠
Equation B- 6
𝐿 𝐿
Stresses along 𝑦-axis normal to 𝑥 direction can similarly be calculated (Figure B. 5)
F1/2
1 F2 θ1
2
𝐹
Ly 3 𝐹 2 Py
2
4𝐹
6
θ2
2
6𝐹5 F4
2
𝐹 6 F6/2
𝐹
6 2
6
2
Figure B. 5: Plane cut normal to 𝑥 direction
𝐹 𝐹
𝑃 𝐹𝐶 𝑠 𝐹𝐶 𝑠 Equation B- 7
𝐿 𝐿
Page | 164
Appendix.B
Procedure for obtaining 𝑥-path and y-path vectors in a regular grid is explained.
These procedures have been implemented in the finite element package to define
Y-Path and X-Path pointing vectors for yacht sails without battens (Figure B. 6 and
Figure B. 7)
(a) (b)
Figure B. 6: y-path pointing vectors in yacht boat sail (a), Zoom in section (b)
Page | 165
Appendix.B
Figure B. 7: x-path pointing vectors near clew in yacht boat sail
The pointing vectors in 𝑦-path direction tend to form paths between the clew and
the head and the pointing vectors in the 𝑥-path direction form an arch between the
clew and the mast. These images show that in the vicinity of the clew the pointing
vectors for both the 𝑥-path and the y-path are directed radially away from the
support point. This indicates that radial direction of fibre reinforcement near the
clew and near other load introduction points on the sail can reinforce the cloth for
loads in both paths.
B.ii Pointing vectors in skewed grids
If the grid is skewed as in Figure B. 8, the procedure of finding pointing vectors can
be extended by choosing the cutting planes parallel to the skewed members.
Page | 166
Appendix.B
Stresses in the global axes can then be defined using transformation of the stress.
(Figure B. 9)
Ni
Figure B. 8: Skewed grid σyy
σyx
σx’y’
ϕ
σx’x’
Figure B. 9: Transformation of the coordinate system
𝐶 𝑠 𝐶 𝑠
𝐶 𝑠 𝐶 𝑠 Equation B- 8
𝐶 𝑠 𝐶 𝑠 𝐶 𝑠
where , and denote stresses in the new coordinate system.
Then from the first equation above, , the second equation, and the final
equation value of can be checked. Once all of the parameter calculated the
pointing vectors from Equation B- 1 and Equation B- 5 can be obtained.
Page | 167

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An Application of Load Path

Theory to the Design of Structures

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of

School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering

The University of New South Wales

This thesis investigates the application of load path algorithms to define

trajectories for placement of reinforcing fibres in membrane tension structures.

function transferring loads from a point of application to a point of reaction. In

options to generate these paths. Therefore load path generation needs to be

performed by integration of an external numerical computing environment (i.e.

In this thesis a method of visualizing of load paths in membrane structures has

element program ANSYS. The method is based on equilibrium of nodal forces

and starts with consideration of trusses. Load flow is identified by removing

elements from an over populated model using an evolutionary method. The

design procedure is iterated for a number of loops by slowly deactivating

inefficient elements by a scalar criterion in ANSYS programming language. The

integrity of this design technique is verified by analyzing number of models

(trusses and shells).

respectively. By introducing the procedure of elimination, two diagonal straps of

compared to the patterns in existing sails.

elements for reinforcement of the structure can provide qualitative information

on the trajectories followed by load in structures and it can predict trajectories

numerical algorithms. A deeper investigation of manufacturing methods and

collaboration with manufacturers of shade structures or yacht sails is

recommended as future work.

written, and to whom I am greatly indebted. My gratitude firstly goes to my

things clearly and simply. Throughout my thesis-writing period, he provided

encouragement, sound advice, good teaching, immense knowledge and lots of

wonderful level of guidance I received throughout this thesis. He has always

invaluable source of knowledge and inspiration both professionally and

I would like to express my gratitude to Associate Professor Carl Reidsema for

the insight on the initiation of this work.

have provided me the wherewithal to endure these two years of graduate

my vision to the life and given me hope.

Figure 2-5: Michell structure for a cantilevered beam(Chan, 1963) ............................... 16

Figure 2-6: Fibre steering patterns (Crosky et al., 2006) ................................................ 17

Figure 2-15: Continuum structure Model (Harasaki 2004)............................................. 30

Figure 3-2: Reinforcing fibres in a yacht sail (Wightsails, 2012) ................................... 39

Figure 3-3: Major principal stress trajectories ................................................................ 40

Figure 3-4: Minor principal stress trajectories ................................................................ 40

Figure 3-5: Schematic of force "stream tube" ................................................................. 42

Figure 3-8: Cantilever block boundary condition ........................................................... 51

Figure 3-9: Load path in 𝑥 direction ............................................................................... 52

Figure 3-10: Load path in 𝑦 direction ............................................................................. 53

Figure 3-11: L-Shape structure boundary condition ....................................................... 54

Figure 3-12: 𝑦 direction load paths ................................................................................. 55

Figure 3-13: 𝑥 direction load paths ................................................................................. 55

Figure 3-14: Simple tension x-paths ............................................................................... 57

Figure 3-15: Simple compression x-paths ...................................................................... 57

Figure 3-16: Bending stress ............................................................................................ 58

Figure 3-17: Pure bending scenario ................................................................................ 58

Figure 3-18: Cantilever bending load picture ................................................................. 59

Figure 3-19: Force equilibrium in 𝑥 direction................................................................. 59

Figure 3-20: Simply supported beam .............................................................................. 60

Figure 3-21: Geometry discontinuity effect on load paths.............................................. 61

Figure 3-22: Interpretation of curved paths .................................................................... 61

Figure 3-23: Structural configuration(Kelly et al., 2010) ............................................... 62

Figure 3-24: sample section of a multi bay truss ............................................................ 66

Figure 3-25: 𝑥-force transfer ........................................................................................... 67

Figure 3-26: 𝑥-force transfer ........................................................................................... 68

Figure 3-27: 𝑦-force transfer ........................................................................................... 68

Figure 3-28: One bay truss example ............................................................................... 69

Figure 3-29: Final design after 4 iterations. .................................................................... 70