Abstract: The indeterminacy evaluation is an effective method for system identification; it can predict the mechanical behaviors of flexible structures in the primary design. However, the conventional indeterminacy evaluation based solely on geometry and topology has neglected the influence of material properties on mechanical behavior and the contribution of each component to the total indeterminacy. To address these issues, a distributed indeterminacy evaluation taking account of the effect of component stiffness was carried out with a view to providing reasonable interpretations and feasible applications for two concepts, i.e., the distributed static indeterminacy (DSI) and the distributed kinematic indeterminacy (DKI). A unified method for the DSI is proposed, and a comparative analysis between this and an existing method revealed that the proposed method has a wider range of applicability and is essentially identical in the kinematically determinate case. It can be concluded that since the DSI is representative of symmetric properties, a simple but efficient grouping criterion can be established which can improve the efficiency of the specific force finding method entitled double singular value decomposition (DSVD). On the other side, an evaluable method for the DKI is proposed suggesting that DKI is a useful indicator for the assessment of nodal mobility and can provide a feasible solution to the form transforming study.

Key words: Flexible structures, Cable-strut structures, Distributed indeterminacy, Initial force design, Force finding, Singular value decomposition, Form transforming

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