Optimal Design of Tension Truss Antennas

An approach for the design of stiff, prestressable tension truss antennas is presented. The approach combines a basic rule for the construction of stiff trusses with an efficient form-finding method for cable net structures. First, statically determinate tension truss configurations for a given supporting structure were created. Then, prestressable geometries of the tension trusses were generated using the form-finding method. Three tension truss antennas with different supporting structures were analysed to demonstrate the advantages of the approach.