The present study has two aims: firstly, to determine the nature of the dependence of the optimum truss height and optimum cross-sectional dimensions that give minimum volume, on several truss parameters such as loads, number of fields, etc. Using the optimized height, significant mass and cost savings can be achieved in the design stage. This is in contrast to the current routine design practice, in which the truss height is taken proportional to the span length, and which does not give an optimal solution with minimum mass. The secondary aim of the article is to present a brief overview of the two novel and inter-related constrained gradient-based optimization techniques, namely the leap-frog method and the dynamic-Q method, used in this study. The reliability and relative effectiveness of the two methods are discussed. Finally, the discretization of the computed continuous optima is addressed.
