Inelastic postbuckling response of steel trusses under thermal loadings

The paper presents a finite element procedure for the inelastic postbuckling analysis of steel trusses under thermal loadings. First, the force-displacement relation in total form is derived. Then an element is formulated to simulate the inelastic nonlinear behavior of truss members under thermal loadings. The actions due to restraint against elongation and material softening are referred to as thermal loads and reduced member loads, respectively. To account for the material softening at elevated temperatures, the EC3 reduction factors are adopted. The trusses are assumed to be either under constant temperature but increasing loads, or under constant loads but rising temperature. The generalized displacement control (GDC) method is modified to solve for the postbuckling paths of the trusses. The results indicate that the critical load (or temperature) of a truss decreases drastically as the preheating (or preload) increases, and that a truss shows a breaking strength much smaller than the elastic critical load, if the effect of yielding is taken into account. From the design point, the overall capacity of an elastic truss can be well represented by the critical load-temperature curve.