Stability of lamella cylinder cable-braced grid shells

• Buckling load of lamella cylinder cable-braced grid shell with imperfection is given.
• Bending moment and geometric nonlinearity are factors causing error of buckling load.
• Shear rigidity of lamella cable-braced mesh was only associated with cable rigidity.

A cable-braced grid shell is a new type of single-layer latticed shell suitable for glass roofs. Compared with traditional single-layer latticed shells, this new type of shell has a unique mesh shape, mesh form and surface shape. The lamella cylinder cable-braced grid shell is the single-layer latticed structure, and therefore, stability is a key design factor. These shells are also sensitive to initial imperfections, and thus, the influence of initial imperfections on stability should be considered. Therefore, in this paper, a lamella cylinder cable-braced grid shell with imperfections is used to develop formulas to describe the buckling load based on the continuum analogy. The major contributions of this paper include the formula for the linear buckling load of a lamella cylinder cable-braced grid shell with imperfections, which is deduced based on the continuum analogy. Then, the equivalent rigidity for a lamella mesh is determined. Last, the formula for the linear buckling load is verified by numerical examples, the errors are analyzed, and a corresponding correction factor is provided.