Experimental and numerical assessment of stayed steel columns

Experimental study of critical and post-buckling behaviour of prestressed stayed columns

“…Depending on the level of initial prestress and the cross-arm length, the ultimate load sustained by the tested prestressed column geometry varies between two limits (see Fig. 25), as observed by previous experimental results on prestressed stayed columns [3,5,8,11,14,15]. The lower limit is the Euler load of the column which occurs when there is zero initial prestress, or where there are no cable stays.…”

“…Previous experimental investigations have focused on the maximum axial load-carrying capacity of stayed columns with single cross-arms [8,14] and with bipods [15], which offer two points of lateral restraint.…”

Stability of prestressed stayed steel columns with a three branch crossarm system

“…This implies that the critical buckling load is less than 8% of the yield load. Moreover, in actual experimental studies of stayed columns, even though the buckling load of the column system is considerably enhanced due to the prestressed stay system, it has been demonstrated quite conclusively for practical arrangements [16,14,17,4] that elastic behaviour is (almost) exclusively observed. Even if material yielding is detected, it is only observed at deformation levels that are well beyond those at the ultimate load.…”

“…Prestressed stayed columns are by their very nature constructed from highly slender elements. Hence, geometrically nonlinear elastic analyses have been demonstrated to be sufficiently accurate given that yielding tends to occur significantly after the ultimate load capacity is reached [16,17]. Hence, in the current work, only geometrically nonlinear elastic analyses are conducted and the consideration of more stocky main column elements is left for the future.…”

“…However, all the previous research works [4,13,16,18] were primarily focused on the stayed columns with two or four branch crossarms, as represented in Figures 2(a) and (c). As far as the authors are aware, investigations into the stayed columns with a three branch system, as shown in Figure 2(b), have hitherto not been attempted.…”