Spatial-structural interaction and strain energy structural optimisation

A research engine iteratively transforms spatial designs into structural designs and vice versa. Furthermore, spatial and structural designs are optimised. It is suggested to optimise a structural design by evaluating the strain energy of its elements and by then removing, adding, or changing the elements accordingly. A single horizontal load on a structural design will not lead to a useable optimised design and at least the effect of four loads should be taken into account simultaneously with the maximum value taken for each element. For a current implementation of the research engine, the optimising strategy above works, however, it will not yield structural designs that lead to modified spatial designs. As this is a necessary condition for the research engine, a modification of the research engine's structural grammars is proposed. This modification is tested and shows intuitively correct results. It remains to be investigated how the modification performs in full, iterative cycles of the research engine.