• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.6 no.5
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• pp.435-457
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• 2006

The paper presents the cost optimization of composite floor trusses composed from a reinforced concrete slab of constant depth and steel trusses consisting of hot rolled channel sections. The optimization was performed by the nonlinear programming approach, NLP. Accordingly, a NLP optimization model for composite floor trusses was developed. An accurate objective function of the manufacturing material, power and labour costs was proposed to be defined for the optimization. Alongside the costs, the objective function also considers the fabrication times, and the electrical power and material consumption. Composite trusses were optimized according to Eurocode 4 for the conditions of both the ultimate and the serviceability limit states. A numerical example of the optimization of the composite truss system presented at the end of the paper demonstrates the applicability of the proposed approach.

• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.47-55
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• 2013

The design composition elements and the mechanical behavior of trusses have been investigated for Pratt trusses. As a result, it was determined that the design composition elements of the trusses consist of the composition of webs, the distance between joints, the chords profile, the depth of the truss, and the double chord composition. In addition, by analyzing models with a variation of elements, comprehensive features of structural behavior have been presented for variations of design of Pratt trusses. This is to provide more effective and useful design information on truss structure in the architectural and structural planning stage.

• Journal of architectural history
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.95-114
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• 2011

Western style timber roof trusses used as typical roof structures of buildings during a modern period have been developed with the interactions with their facade and functionality. The shapes of trusses and member sizes have been diversely changed by the purposes of architects, historical circumstances, and structural characteristics. For this reason, the change in the shapes of western style timber trusses along the times is one of important technology assets demonstrating the development of their structures during the modern period. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to find out their structural characteristics throughout parametric analysis of which parameters were determined from the collected and classified documents on western style timber roof structure built in the modern period carefully obtained from public institutions. Results of the parametric analysis are as follows. The number of king-post trusses and modified king-post trusses built between 1920 and 1937 reaches almost half of the total number of truss types investigated. The mean values of their spans, distances, tributary areas, and height are respectively, 10.5m, 2.4m, $24.37m^2$and 3.24m. The cross-section areas of trusses tend to reduce since the city construction law was enacted in 1920. Also, this study found that western architects usually used larger structural members than eastern architects and usages and finishing materials of roof trusses are not always considered as one of the important design parameters.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.247-261
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• 2003

The technique of posttensioning has been used successfully to improve the performance of existing concrete structures. However, very few applications of this technique can be found in steel structures. Posttensioning by means of high strength cable or bar can be used to effectively increase the working load capacity of Truss Bridges. The benefits of posttensioning trusses can be achieved in strengthening of existing structures as well as in the design of new structures. In this paper, the elastic behavior of posttensioned trusses with straight and draped tendon profiles is examined. For the analysis of posttensioned trusses in the elastic range of behavior, two methods are presented, namely, the flexibility method and the mixed-method, i.e., a combination of the stiffness and flexibility methods. Using the presented methods, the effects of design variables such as the tendon profile, truss type, prestress force, and tendon eccentricity on the working load and deflection of trusses are studied. The results show that the allowable load of truss increases proportionally with increase in prestress force and eccentricity. Posttesioning enlarges the elastic range, increases redundancy, and reduces deflection and member stresses. Thus, the remaining life of a truss bridge can be increased relatively inexpensively.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.1069-1084
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• 2016

This paper introduces a new and effective design amplification factor-based approach for reliable optimum design of trusses. This paper may be categorized as in the family of decoupled methods that aiming for a reliable optimum design based on a Design Amplification Factor (DAF). To reduce the computational expenses of reliability analysis, an improved version of Response Surface Method (RSM) was used. Having applied this approach to two planar and one spatial truss problems, it exhibited a satisfactory performance.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.319-330
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• 1999

The design of composite space trusses is a demanding task that involves taking several decisions on the truss depth, number of panels, member configuration, number of chord layers and concrete slab thickness and grade. The focus in this paper is on the design of top concrete slabs of composite space trusses, and in particular their thickness. Several effects must be considered in the process of designing the slab before an optimum thickness can be chosen. These effects include the inplane forces arising from shear interaction with the steel sub-truss and the flexural. and sheer effects of direct lateral slab loading. They also include a constructional consideration that the thickness must allow for sufficient cover and adequate space for placing the reinforcement. The work presented in this paper shows that the structural requirements on the concrete slab thickness are in many cases insignificant compared with the constructional requirements.

• Journal of the Korean Wood Science and Technology
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.708-713
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• 2014

Trusses are widely used for wooden houses in the areas where wood construction in generalized for residential housings such as North America, Australian, New Zealand. In Korea, joist and rafter system is generally used because of the production cost, transportation cost and lack of experience required for truss manufacturing. In this study, roof trusses and flat trusses were manufactured by using oriented strand board (OSB) gusset plates for field assembly and tested under bending load to obtain the allowable loads. The allowable load and the actual load of 6m span roof trusses were 10.60 kN and 5.26 kN, respectively, which is regarded to be sufficient for use in construction. The allowable load and the actual load of 6m span floor flat trusses were 7.18 kN and 7.43 kN, respectively. For flat trusses, the allowable load is slightly lower than the actual load but the difference in very small, and it is thought that flat trusses can be used for construction by applying small change of structures and members.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.43-58
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• 2015

There are many studies on the optimization of steel trusses in literature; and, a large number of them include a shape optimization. However, only a few of these studies are focused on the prestressed steel trusses. Therefore, this paper aims to determine the amounts of the material and cost savings in steel plane trusses in the case of prestressing. A parallel-chord simply supported steel truss is handled as an example to evaluate the used approach. It is considered that prestressing tendon is settled under the bottom bar, between two end supports, using deviators. Cross-sections of the truss members and height of the truss are taken as the design variables. The prestress losses are calculated in two steps as instantaneous losses and time-dependent losses. Tension increment in prestressing tendon due to the external loads is also considered. A computer program based on genetic algorithm is developed to solve the optimization problem. The handled truss is optimized for different span lengths and different tendon eccentricities using the coded program. The effects of span length and eccentricity of tendon on prestressed truss optimization are investigated. The results of different solutions are compared with each other and those of the non-prestressed solution. It is concluded that the amounts of the material and the cost of a steel plane truss can be reduced up to 19.9% and 14.6%, respectively, by applying prestressing.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.75 no.5
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• pp.585-594
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• 2020

Detecting the damage of indeterminate trusses is of major importance in the literature. This paper proposes a quick approach in this regard, utilizing a precise mathematical approach based on Finite Element Method. Different to a general two-step method defined in the literature essentially based on optimization approach, this method consists of three steps including Damage-Suspected Element Identification step, Imminent Damaged Element Identification step, and finally, Damage Severity Detection step and does not need any optimizing algorithm. The first step focuses on the identification of damage-suspected elements using an index based on modal residual force vector. In the second step, imminent damage elements are identified among the damage-suspected elements detected in the previous step using a specific technique. Ultimately, in the third step, a novel relation is derived to calculate the damage severity of each imminent damaged element. To show the efficiency and quick function of the proposed method, three examples including a 25-bar planar truss, a 31-bar planar truss, and a 52-bar space truss are studied; results of which indicate that the method is innovatively capable of suitably detecting, for indeterminate trusses, not only damaged elements but also their individual damage severity by carrying out solely one analysis.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.5 no.6
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• pp.443-458
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• 2005

Steel angles are widely used in roof trusses as web and chord members and in lattice towers. Very often angle members are connected eccentrically. As a result, not only an angle member is under an axial force, but it is also subject to a pair of end eccentric moments. Moreover, the connection at each end provides some fixity so neither pinned nor the fixed end represents the reality. Many national design codes allow for the effects due to eccentricities by modifying the slenderness ratio and reducing the compressive strength of the member. However, in practice, it is difficult to determine accurately the effective length. The concept behind this method is inconsistent with strength design of members of other cross-sectional types such as I or box sections of which the buckling strength is controlled by the Perry constant or the initial imperfection parameters. This paper proposes a method for design of angle frames and trusses by the second-order analysis. The equivalent initial imperfection-to-length ratios for equal and unequal angles to compensate the negligence of initial curvatures, load eccentricities and residual stresses are determined in this paper. From the obtained results, the values of imperfection-to-length ratios are suggested for design and analysis of angle steel trusses allowing for member buckling strength based on the Perry-Robertson formula.