The connectivity properties of a weight-bearing network are exploited to
enhance it's capacity. We study a 2-d network of sites where the weight-bearing
capacity of a given site depends on the capacities of the sites connected to it
in the layers above. The network consists of clusters viz. a set of sites
connected with each other with the largest such collection of sites being
denoted as the maximal cluster. New connections are made between sites in
successive layers using two distinct strategies. The key element of our
strategies consists of adding as many disjoint clusters as possible to the
sites on the trunk T of the maximal cluster. The new networks can bear much
higher weights than the original networks and have much lower failure rates.
The first strategy leads to a greater enhancement of stability whereas the
second leads to a greater enhancement of capacity compared to the original
networks. The original network used here is a typical example of the branching
hierarchical class. However the application of strategies similar to ours can
yield useful results in other types of networks as well.Comment: 17 pages, 3 EPS files, 5 PS files, Phys. Rev. E (to appear
