Efficient Elastic Modulus Adjustment Procedure for Limit Analysis of Spatial Frame Structure

Abstract

An efficient elastic modulus adjustment procedure to evaluate lower-bound ultimate bearing capacity of spatial frame structures was proposed based on the strain energy equilibrium principle. Four strategies to determine the elastic modulus adjustment factor were developed based on the fixed strain method (FSM), circular arc method (CAM), strain energy conservation law (SECL) and strain energy equilibrium principle (SEEP). The precisions and convergent properties of above four strategies were quantitatively investigated through two numerical examples. The results show that the efficiency and accuracy of the SEEP are of most acceptable.