Experiments And FEA On New Joints Of Sun Valley Steel Structure For Expo Axis Project

In the space truss and lattice structure, the joints connect members and transfer loads, thus the reasonable designing of joints has a direct impact on structure safety. In the Expo Axis project, a new type of joint has been adopted in the single-layer lattice structure of sun valley steel structure.In order to learn the new joints' behavior, load-carrying capacity and collapse mechanism, and to verify the joints produced by different departments with different processing technologies can meet the design requirements, this thesis experiments on fourteen typical full-scale joints selected from three sun valleys. It is found that the new joints adopted in sun valleys have sufficient safety reserves and can meet the requirement of "strong-joints/weak-member".Based on the elastic-perfectly plastic model and the Von-Mises yield criterion, the finite element modes for this new joints are established with the software ANSYS, in which the effect of large deformation is considered. Results from finite element modeling of the test joints indicate that, the elastic-plastic nonlinear analysis considering large deformations can simulate the bearing behavior of the joint satisfactorily.Some analyses of important parameters are conducted to learn the structure behavior and collapse mechanism of the new joint further. It is found that the geometry of joint plate has little influence on the bearing capacity; the flange thickness of main rod influences the failure modes of specimen greatly; Loads change on the secondary rod has a certain impact on the load bearing capacity.