RESEARCH ARTICLE
Experimental and Numerical Study for the Shaping Formation of SCST Structures by Cable-tensioning
J.W. Kim1, J. H. Doh*, 2, S. Fragomeni3
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2013Volume: 7
First Page: 77
Last Page: 83
Publisher ID: TOCIEJ-7-77
DOI: 10.2174/1874149501307010077
Article History:
Received Date: 7/2/2013Revision Received Date: 5/4/2013
Acceptance Date: 8/4/2013
Electronic publication date: 12/7/2013
Collection year: 2013
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
This paper discusses the behaviour characteristics of the shaping formation of Single-Chorded Space Truss (SCST) structures by means of cable-tensioning of bottom chords. The innovative technique is fast and economical and issued in many types of space structures. The small-scale test models presented herein consist of uniform pyramids with multi-directional ball type joints which are erected into their final shape by cable-tensioning. Since the joint behaviour is very significant in studying the shaping of SCST structures, basic tests for beam and pyramidal units were performed. The feasibility of the proposed cable-tensioning technique and the reliability of the established geometric model were confirmed by finite element analysis. The proposed cable-tensioning technique indicates that the behaviour characteristic of joints is very important in the shaping formation of SCST structures. More specifically in situations where heavy cranes are inaccessible, the cable-tensioning construction technique has proven to be an easy and reasonable method compared to conventional construction methods that typically include heavy cranes and scaffolding.