Slender Stress driven Structure

Slender structures, like suspension bridges, use primarily tension to carry both the design loads and their own weight and are generally optimal in that the primary structural elements are not subject to buckling. The need to avoid long compressive spans is critical in determining the optimal form of such structures.

Natural systems also use prestressing and as much elements in tension as possible as an strategy to avoid buckling stability problems. All those natural systems are using fibers as a material system for being the cheapest way to introduce tensile structural members in terms of manufacturing time and energy.

All natural systems are the results of thousands of generations of an evolutionary system. This long process has been optimizing the performance of every single element. Genetic algorithms are the most powerful tools that have been developed that can reproduce this processes of optimization, but they are difficult to implement, and need a very powerful machine. Instead of that, there are similar processes but far more simple that can produce satisfactory results.

Actual design methodologies doesn’t consider any optimization process because are time consuming and need experts in many fields. The way the majority of design practices work is to create a team that exchanges a lot of information between them, but there is no one person that controls every single aspect of that.

This complex work system can be improved if the proper tools are being used. The more expertise work in a team, the more important is the good exchange of information.