Out-of-plane strength design of spatially trussed arches with a rectangular lattice section

Abstract

Although several studies of the out-of-plane strength and design of steel arches with a solid web section have been reported, little research of the out-of-plane strength and design of spatially trussed arches has been reported in the open literature or design codes. In deference to the steel arch with a solid web section, the shear deformations play important parts in the out-of-plane inelastic buckling behavior of spatially trussed arches. In addition, global out-of-plane inelastic buckling of a spatially trussed arch is associated with local buckling of its components such as chord and diagonal web tubes and hence local component buckling influences the out-of-plane strength of the arch. This paper investigates the out-of-plane inelastic strength and design of spatially trussed circular arches with a rectangular lattice section under general loading using a three-dimensional nonlinear inelastic numerical approach. Methods for the out-of-plane inelastic strength and design of spatially trussed arches under uniform compression or under uniform bending are developed, based on which interaction equations for the design of spatially trussed steel arches under general loading against their out-plane failure are proposed. These interaction equations provide good lower bounds for the out-of-plane strength of spatially trussed arches.