ABSTRACT
Under the vested steel consumption condition, six different grid reinforcements are investigated, shown in Figure 1(b)–(g). The six grid reinforcements contain two different types: a). Flexible reinforcement, pre-stressed cables are exerted in all quadrilateral grids, as Figure 1(b) shows; b). Rigid reinforcement, single diagonal struts are added. According to different layouts of single diagonal struts, several categories of lattice shell are proposed: diagonal strut-braced lattice shell, a central symmetrical tetragon is formed by single diagonal struts, shown in Figure 1(c); symmetrical diagonal strut-braced lattice shell, the layout of struts is symmetrical, as Figure 1(d) shows; herringbone strut-braced lattice shell, composed of positive and negative herringbone arrangement, as Figure 1(e) shows; lamella lattice shell, grids in ordinary lat-
1 INTRODUCTION
Since the end of the 20th century, due to light weight, attractive appearance, direct load transfer path and other benefits, lattice shells have been widely utilized in public buildings. As it is economically sound and easy to mount, lattice shell with quadrilateral grids becomes a common building type, such as the World Trade Center in Dresden German, the Downland Gridshell in England, new train station in Guangzhou China etc (S. Malek et al. 2014). Nonetheless, because of the insufficient shear stiff-ness, lattice shell with quadrilateral grids is prone to instability, which leads to degraded load-bearing capacity, especially under the effect of nonlinearity and initial imperfection.
