Truss structures are built up from individual slender-body members connected at common joints. The members are connected through hinge joints which are free to rotate and thus cannot transmit moment. Individual members carry only axial tensile or compressive force. In this chapter, the truss is comprised of uniaxial elements introduced in the previous chapter. However, in order to construct the global stiffness matrix of a truss structure in 3D space, it is necessary to construct the element stiffness matrices with 3 DOF at each node, corresponding to three displacement components in the Cartesian coordinate system. After developing the finite element formulation for 3D truss structures, the effects of thermal expansion and uniaxial members subject to torsional deformation are treated.
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