Experimental Study On The Temcor Joint And The Structural Analysis Of Aluminum Single-layer Dome

Aluminium alloys have been recognized by the majority of scholars and designers because of its light weight, high corrosion resistance and the outstanding process ability. Accordingly, aluminium alloys are advantageous as structural materials for making prefabricated connections and for easy transportation. This new structural material is considered very competitive in field of large span structures. Nowadays, Temcor system is very popular in single-layer lattice domes. This system is composed by double T aluminium extruded bars, six of them are joined together in the nodes, where are connected to a couple of circular gusset plates by means of bolted connection.Due to the paucity of existing research on mechanical properties of Temcor joint and the behaviour of Temcor joint would significantly influence the deformation of the dome and the internal force of the member, the characteristics of the Temcor joint is investigated in this pape. Numerical simulation and experimental study were carried out and these results could serve as a reference for the actual project and foundation for future promotion of single-layer aluminum dome system.This paper is devoted to investigate the out-of-plane load bearing capacity of Temcor joint by means of experimental and numerical simulation approaches. Accurate numerical simulation model of Temcor joint is set-up by means of FEA. Two out-of-plane bearing capacity formulae are proposed in this paper based on the experimental data and FEA results.In actual project, the structure sometime will suffer to cyclic load, such as earthquake action and wind load, so the energy dissipation ability of the joint directly affects the behaviour of the structure. There is no experiment on the hysteretic behaviour of spatial joint until now. In this paper, the hysteretic behaviour of the typical Temcor joint in full scale is analysed, under out-of-plane cyclic loading conditions, by means of both experimental and numerical approaches. The test results emphasized the main characteristics of the behaviour of this joint beyond the elastic range and up to the collapse, the stress development during loading process and the final destroy mode of Temcor joint are obtained. The experimental hysteresis curves have been compared with the ones coming from an “ad hoc” numerical model, giving rise to a very satisfactory agreement.Then, the numerical analysis of an actual single-layer latticed dome considers the actual stiffness of Temcor has been carried out by using FEA based on the “semi-rigid” joint simulate method, to compare the differences between rigid joint dome and “semi-rigid” joint dome under static load, uneven foundation settlements and stability behaviour have been done in this paper as well. Due to the sensibility to the wind load, the wind-induced vibration effect on the domes mentioned above has also been investigated.Due to the limited investigation on the solar radiation on the behaviour of the aluminium single-layer latticed dome, the non-uniform temperature field is set up based on the condition of an actual project in Xinjiang. Comparison member stress and node displacement between aluminium dome and steel dome under non-uniform temperature field have been done. The analyses results show that the non-uniform temperature field under Solar radiation has an investigate influence on these two domes.