Stability of cable-supported spherical reticulated shell with tension members

Abstract

The suspendome has been widely employed in large-span space structures in recent years, and it has stronger structural stiffness and higher load-carrying capacity than single-layer spherical reticulated shell. In general, it is negligible for enhancement of load-carrying capacity to integrate cables and struts into the inner ring of reticulated shell. Based on the suspendome structure, a new hybrid space structure system, namely, cable-supported reticulated shell with tension member, is proposed in this study. To elucidate and verify its feasibility, the buckling mode and buckling form are obtained by the eigenvalue buckling analysis and nonlinear buckling analysis using ANSYS package, respectively. Furthermore, to determine the optimal structural form, this article investigates the effect of the main ribbed strut length, the initial geometric imperfection, asymmetric load, pretension in cables, and the material nonlinearity on its stability. The result shows that the proposed new structural system is of high load-carrying capacity. Tension member integrated to cable-supported reticulated shell can effectively improve the overall stiffness and greatly reduce the deformation of spherical reticulated shell. The plastic failure shape occurs with the similar pattern. The instable region mainly occurs on the main ribs with tension members, and each main rib only has one local failure dimple. The load-carrying capacity is remarkably affected by the asymmetric load, the initial geometric imperfection, and material nonlinearity. Based on the parametric analyses, Type C is the optimal choice, that is, appending cables and struts to the outermost ring of single-layer spherical reticulated shell, and arranging out-of-plane tension members under the four main ribs.