Abstract: Based upon the theorems of structural variations this paper derives a set of expressions for calculating partial derivatives of internal forces, stresses and joint displacements with respect to bar areas for truss structures. Compared with the known formulas for finding the gradients of structural behaviours the calculation effort with the proposed expressions in this paper is usually smaller because the additional virtual loadings needed are relatively fewer. It is of practical significance to various optimization methods in which the calculation of gradients of behaviours is widely used. Moreover, applying the derived formulas to the fully stressed design (FSD), we obtain an improved iterative method for FSD. The numerical examples show that the new method considerably reduces the reanalysis number required to converge to an FSD in comparison with the simple stress ratio method.