Truss engineering is the design and creation of trusses that are made of one or more potential materials. Trusses are crafted from a straight and slender pieces of material manufactured then connected at various joints to form a triangular shape. The common purpose of truss is to construct a large structure with the shape and design of truss adding strength and weather resistance to the overall structure(Šimi & Ilijaš, 2012). Truss can be designed as planar trusses, which are a two dimensional shape that commonly used in roofs and floors while space trusses are three dimensional shapes. Multiple trusses can also be combined.
Some consultant or engineering firms design and build pre-made trusses to be sold to construction and architecture
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However if there are significant forces out of plane, then the truss should be modelled as a three dimensional to solve the truss analysis. In structural analysis, there exist several methods to analyse truss such as method of joints, method of sections, graphic statics, finite element method, etc.
The method of joints applies the equilibrium of joints and act as the basis for all truss analysis directed towards finding the unknown forces in the truss structure. Basically, a truss composed of a series of members and joints. Member’s forces are discovered considering all the joints or points in a state of equilibrium. Therefore for plane truss, the two independent equations of statics exist for concurrent force system (∑Fx=0 and∑Fy=0). The joint will move if there exist net force acting towards the joint. In addition, the method of section is applied by separate the truss structure into sections, and then replaces the removed section with unknown member forces acting in the direction of the cut member. The forces in the members are calculated by summation of unknown forces by using equilibrium equation∑Fx=0, ∑Fy=0 and∑M=0. Hence with only three equilibrium equations, the truss section cut should be located where there are only three unknown member