System-reliability analysis of steel truss towers

Abstract

Steel truss towers are important structures in civil engineering, used as, for example, antenna towers, architectural towers, transmission towers, chimney towers, light towers, viewing towers, or water towers. In the paper, the latter structural type is analysed. Three types of truss towers with different topology are discussed. The towers are designed according to the standards. Next, reliability analysis is performed and the influence of type of truss topology on reliability is analysed. Reliability analysis concerns formulation of the limit state, calculation of failure probability and determination of reliability index. In the paper, the system approach is proposed, definitely more complete than that obtained using approximation-simulation methods. In the case of structures analysed in the paper, the types of reliability models are determined. Identification of reliability models relies on studies on the transformation of the safe structural system into the geometrically variable system (mechanism). The investigations made it possible to determine the kinematically admissible failure mechanisms which contain minimal critical sets of elements. In order to identify the mechanism, spectral analysis of the linear stiffness matrix is used. In the case of the towers of concern, the formulas specifying the number of mechanisms for any number of repeating sections are determined.

Analysis of Basic Failure Scenarios of a Truss Tower in a Probabilistic Approach

“…The influence of randomness is taken into account in the capacity and the effect of actions. As in publication [22], both values have a normal distribution. The coefficient of variation for the effect of actions is equal to 6%.…”

“…In the paper, the system approach is used for reliability analysis. In this case, structural characteristics of the truss structure are taken into account, i.e., interaction of the structural elements in the load-carrying system [19][20][21][22][23][24]. In the reliability theory, there are three models: serial, parallel, and mixed (parallel-serial and serial-parallel) systems.…”

“…To compute reliability of the single element, it is necessary to determine expected To determine the reliability of the system, it is necessary to calculate the reliability of a single element. The procedure that leads to the determination of the reliability of a single element R i was presented, for example, in [21,22]. The first step is to determine the effect of action E i , and capacity N i .…”

The probabilistic model for system reliability analysis of a steel plane and spatial trusses

“…Instead of this fact, as the method is not easy to implement, especially for big structures (with many possible causative elements) its application is limited. Nevertheless, in the last years the system reliability analysis has been successively becomming more popular, especially for steel truss analysis (Mochocki et al, 2018;Park et al, 2004, Zabojszcza andRadoń, 2020).…”

Reliability of simple space truss structure

“…The truss structure is important in civil engineering, generally used in antenna towers, architectural towers, transmission towers, chimney towers, light towers, viewing towers, or water towers (Mochocki, Obara, and Radoń 2018). This paper will explain how the behavior of a simple space truss structure with a comparison of each method and procedure of structural reliability analysis with a deterministic structural capacity and an indeterministic load.…”