Study on Effects of Bending Stiffness of Aluminum Alloy Plate-Column Joints on Stability of Semi-Rigid Single-Layer Cylindrical Reticulated Shells

The plate-column joint (PCJ) is a kind of typical semi-rigid joint improved from traditional plate joint and has larger bending stiffness. The influence of the geometric parameters of the joint on its bending stiffness and the stability of its semi-rigid reticulated shell has not been well-clarified. For this reason, this study first investigates the influence of the cover plate thickness and bolt diameter on the joint bending stiffness and then obtains the bending moment-rotation angle curves. Secondly, an improved bilinear model (i.e. bending moment-rotation angle) is proposed, and the fitting formulas of the stiffness coefficient, initial stiffness and yield bending moment of the bilinear model are formulated by a multiple regression analysis. Finally, the influence of the cover plate thickness on the bearing capacity of single-layer cylindrical reticulated shells with different spans and rise-to-span ratios is figured out. The results showed that the smaller the cover plate thickness, the smaller the bearing capacity of reticulated shell. When the thickness of the cover plate is less than 4 mm, the bending stiffness decreases significantly. Therefore, the cover plate thickness can be taken as 4‐6mm to save steel consumption. Furthermore, bending stiffness of the joint has a significant effect on the failure mode of the reticulated shell.