Shear deformation plate continua of large double layered space structures

A simple method is presented to model large rigid-jointed lattice structures as continuous elastic media with couple stresses using energy equivalence. In our analysis the transition from the discrete system to the continuous media is achieved by expanding the displacements and the rotations of the nodal points in a Taylor series about a suitable chosen origin. The strain energy of the continuous media with couple stresses is then specialized to obtain shear deformation plate continua. Equivalent continua for single layered grids, double layered grids and three-dimensional lattices are then obtained.