FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS AND FULL-SCALE EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH OF COMPLEX LOADING ON LARGE-DIAMETER WELDED HOLLOW SPHERICAL JOINT

In accordance with the need for the design of a super-large-diameter welded hollow spherical joint of an arch steel roof in a gymnasium, a nonlinear finite element analysis and a full-scale experiment on the joint were carried out. Firstly, using the elastoplastic shell element shell143 of ANSYS, considering both the geometry and material nonlinearity, the stress distributions on the surface of the spherical joint were obtained with 1.5 times of the designed loads using finite element analysis. It is found that the stress at the bottom of the fourth wimble pipe reached the yield point at first. Subsequently, a full-scale experiment on the spherical joint of the gymnasium's steel roof was carried out. The result of the experiment indicated that under 1.4 times of the designed loads, the stress at the bottom of the fourth wimble pipe reached the yield point at first. The results of the experiment and finite element analysis were basically consistent. The results of the study can provide important suggestion for the design of engineering joints.