Experimental study of twisted thin-walled box components in single-layer domes

Abstract

In recent years, the demand for thin-walled structures has dramatically increased in civil, mechanical, and aerospace engineering fields. Numerous new structural components were introduced due to the upsurge trend. Thus a deep understanding of their performance is necessary. One of these components is a twisted thin-walled box component, a concept that derives from the members of a single-layer dome. Hence, static experiments on twisted thin-walled box components under four load cases were carried out to test their mechanical behavior in this study. The stress and deformation were obtained at several essential measuring points of the structure. Then, finite element analysis was conducted, and the correctness of the finite element model was verified by comparing it with the experimental results. The results demonstrate that all measuring points remain elastic under the considered static load cases. For the overload case, the structure would be destroyed at 4.4 times the load case magnitude, from which the twisting and denting were identified as the main failure mode. Therefore, the structure displays high safety reserves and good potential in high-load-resisting systems.

Keywords

• Box element
• Dome
• Experiment
• Finite element
• Thin-walled
• Twisted