Study On The Performance Of The Full Cuplock Steel Tubular Scaffoldings

Full cuplock steel tubular scaffolding is widely used in civil engineering for its high versatility, high bearing capacity and relatively low cost. But with the rapid development of social economy, modern long-span bridges and tall buildings appear constantly. In order to meet the needs of their construction scaffolding is becoming taller and taller, and in recent years the collapse of scaffolding systems frequently occur, which not only brings economic loss to parties involved in the projects, but also seriously endangers the safety of workers in the fields. To solve this tough problem, a large number of scholars and experts have conducted tests on this type of scaffolding, and compared the causes of accidents and put forward the methods and theories beneficial to its development.In this paper finite element analysis software Sap2000 was used for the modeling of such scaffolding to study its safety and stability on the basis of previous research work. The main work is as follows.1. The investigation on the performance of such type of scaffolding under loads shows the hinged joints or rigid joints make its load carrying capacity either too low or too higher. In order to truly reflect the real situation under loads, the joints were assumed to be semi-rigid based on the destructive test result in the literature.2. Effect of a number of structure factors on the safety and stability of this type of scaffolding was investigated, such as sweep shots, pole pitches and bay widths, the lengths of poles beyond the top horizontal rods, horizontal reinforcing layer, vertical cross bridgings, with important conclusions drawn.3. With an actual project, full cuplock steel tubular scaffolding was investigated to analyze its overall stability and internal forces, with its overall stability factor and utility rates of each members obtained.4. Attentions that should be paid during construction were summarized, and some suggestions were given for reference.