States of self-stress in symmetric frameworks and applications

We use the symmetry-extended Maxwell rule established by Fowler and Guest to detect states of self-stress in symmetric planar frameworks. The dimension space self-stresses that are detectable this way may be expressed terms number joints bars unshifted various symmetry operations framework. Therefore, method provides an efficient tool construct frameworks with many ‘fully-symmetric’ self-stress, or ‘anti-symmetric’ self-stress. Maximising independent a framework, as well understanding their properties, has important practical applications, for example design construction gridshells. show usefulness our applying it some examples.