1. Less material, just as strong: optimising a truss structure, from computation to artificial intelligence
Distributing a given amount of material in a truss bridge as well as possible. The topic combines physics (elasticity, Hooke’s law), mathematics (system KU = F, constrained optimisation, Lagrange multipliers), Python, artificial intelligence (a neural network that speeds up the computation) and engineering drawing (CAD, technical drawing, 3D printing and load tests).