Parametric study of cable-stiffened single-layer cylindrical latticed shells with different supporting conditions

•The stability behaviour of cylindrical latticed shell can be enhanced considerably by the cable-stiffened system.•The principle to determine the governing imperfection distribution corresponds to the actual buckling load is proposed.•The stability behaviour of this structure improved with the cross-section area of cable, pretension in cables and post lengths.•The cable-stiffened system decrease the sensitivity of this new structure to the joint types.

Numerical investigations to the stability behaviour of novel cable-stiffened single-layer cylindrical latticed shells with different supporting conditions are presented. It is shown that the governing imperfection distribution that should be adopted within finite element analysis to capture the actual load carrying capacity does not always follow the lowest buckling mode for the type of element and assumptions implemented in the current study, which distinguishes it from the existed specification. The principle to determine the governing imperfection distribution is proposed in this study, this is followed by parametric analysis which aims to investigate the stability behaviour of cable-stiffened single-layer cylindrical latticed shell systematically. The parametric analysis shows that the stability behaviour of ordinary cylindrical latticed shell can be considerably enhanced by the pre-tensioned cable-stiffened system. It should be stressed that the introduction of cable-stiffened system decreases the sensitivity of the stability behaviour of ordinary cylindrical latticed shell to joint types, this would enable engineers to adopt scissor-type joints to cylindrical latticed shells. The effects of other parameters on the stability behaviour of cable-stiffened single-layer cylindrical latticed are also presented in this current work.