In-Plane Failure and Strength of Pin-Ended Circular Steel Arches Considering Coupled Local and Global Buckling
Publication: Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 143, Issue 1
Abstract
Little research has been reported that investigates the effects of plate local buckling and postbuckling on the in-plane behavior and strength of steel arches, and hitherto there has been no corresponding design guidance available. This paper presents a numerical investigation of the structural behavior of steel arches, and proposes a strength design method against their in-plane failure by considering plate local elastic-plastic buckling and postbuckling coupled with global elastic-plastic buckling. The failure modes of pin-ended steel circular arches having a box section under a uniformly distributed radial load are analyzed by using a large deformation elastic-plastic finite-element formulation. It is found that plate local buckling significantly influences the in-plane failure mode and strength of a steel arch. The arch may fail owing to local elastic-plastic buckling of its plates, global elastic-plastic buckling of the arch, or coupled local and global elastic-plastic buckling. The failure mode is found to depend on a number of factors such as the height-to-thickness ratio of the plate components, the aspect ratio of the cross section, the rise-to-span ratio, and the slenderness of the arch, as well as the yield stress of the steel. It is also found that the most important factors that influence the strength of the arch are the normalized global slenderness of the arch and the normalized height-to-thickness ratio of the plate components of the cross section. A strength reduction coefficient for estimating the in-plane strength of arches is developed based on these two most significant parameters, and a corresponding strength design method is proposed.
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Acknowledgments
This study has been supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China through a research grant (No. 51278273) awarded to the first author, by the College Doctoral Research Founding (No. 20120002110001) awarded to the first author, by the Natural Science Foundation of Beijing through the project (No. 8132036) awarded to the first two authors, by Tsinghua University of China through a grant (No. 2012Z10134) awarded to the first author, and by the Australian Research Council through a Linkage Project (LP150101196) awarded to the first and fourth authors.
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Published In
Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 143 • Issue 1 • January 2017
Copyright
© 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Nov 20, 2015
Accepted: Jul 14, 2016
Published online: Aug 22, 2016
Published in print: Jan 1, 2017
Discussion open until: Jan 22, 2017
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