Out-of-plane inelastic stability design of circular arches under combination of compression and bending.

Based on the previous studies on out-of-plane stability of arches in uniform compression and bending moment, this paper presented the research results of the out-of-plane ultimate strength of circular steel arches under the combination of axial compression and bending by using FE analysis in elasto-plastic range of materials. With the consideration of different geometric parameters, support conditions, section forms and load combinations etc, a design method for predicting the out-of-plane ultimate strength of circular steel arches was proposed based on FEA results. The results obtained indicate that the N-M interaction equation proposed for predicting the out-of-plane strength of arches is applicable for various support conditions and complex load combination, where average axial force, maximum bending moments within 1/3 arc length of arch top and stability coefficient for non-uniform moment distribution are introduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]