Aluminium Structures in Building and Civil Engineering Applications

Structural applications of aluminium are considered in this paper. Although the discussion is mainly devoted to Europe, the paper also refers, where possible, to developments in other parts of the world. The problems faced by a designer in creating an optimum design are described, followed by a brief review of the research carried out in the past four decades on the structural behaviour of aluminium and a preview of topics still to be investigated. A historical overview of standards is then given, starting from the ECCS Recommendations up to the recently published Eurocode 9. Finally, a number of structural applications are dealt with, as well as some future directions and concluding remarks

Experimental and numerical analyses of aluminium frames exposed to fire conditions

Design models are required to assess the behaviour in fire of aluminium structures. These models need to be validated by comparison with test. Up to now tests results are only available for (small scale) individual aluminium components. This paper provides the results of tests carried out on aluminium frames. A finite element model in combination with a sophisticated constitutive model are used to simulate the tests. The results of the simulations agree with that of the tests at room and elevated temperatures. Keywords

Load sharing in insulated double glass units : determination of the air pressure in the cavity due to mechanical and thermo-mechanical loads

Glass is an indispensable building material because of the special properties. Glass has a low heat resistance and therefore it is a thermal leakage in the outer wall. Insulated double glass reduces the heat transfer tremendously. The closed air in the hermetically closed cavity is a good insulator. The magnitude of the pressure in a hermetically closed cavity is an unknown parameter. What is the cavity pressure if the temperature changed, ambient pressure changed, under a uniformly distributed load, under a concentrated load and the like? These influences were investigated by an analytical model and were verified by experimental research

Numerical/experimental research on welded joints in aluminium truss girders

Welded joints in a 30 meter span aluminium truss girder were investigated numerically and experimentally. Since aluminium design rules for welded K-and N-joints in CHS truss girders were lacking the joints were checked using steel design rules. Calculations showed that the N-joints were governing for chord and brace sizes. Further numerical analysis on the N-joints using ANSYS 11.0 was carried out. Full scale experimental research was successfully carried out for validation of the numerical calculations. It is concluded that steel design rules predict the failure behavior and failure mode of the considered aluminium N-joints well. However, steel design rules overestimate the failure load by 8% for the truss configurations investigated

Analytical and experimental research on strength properties of adhesive bonded joints in aluminium structures

The structural use of adhesives in the building industry is growing in interest, due to successful applications in automotive and aerospace industry. However, the potential of adhesive joints is not yet fully utilized in building structures due to a lack of design rules c.q. building regulations. In particular the limited knowledge on the joint strength characteristics as well as the durability of the joint is a restriction for the use in practice. For these reasons analytical and experimental research projects have been carried out at Eindhoven University of Technology (see [1] to [3]). In the present paper only the static strength prediction is worked out in further detail. The project focused on the static failure load prediction of single lap joints using the singularity approach [1]. The lap joint is worked out analytically and numerically. Several elastic models for stress analysis were examined. The Allman-method [4] was worked out further into a singular stress failure criterion. The failure load prediction was verified by experiments on single lap joints with varying overlap length and width

Blast resistance behaviour of steel frame structrures

The effect of a blast explosion on a typical steel frame building is investigated by means of computer simulations. The simulations help to identify possible hot spots that may lead to local or global failure. Since the blast energy is transferred to the structure by means of the façade, it is crucial to proper model the façade using an adequate failure criterion

Cross-sectional classification of aluminium beams subjected to fire

Fire design for aluminium alloy beams is performed using the same system of cross-sectional slenderness classes as is employed at room temperature. Identical width-over-thickness ratio limits are used to define the boundaries between the classes. These limits are known (and demonstrated) to be conservative, but may in fact be over-conservative. Especially for tempered alloys, the geometric limits may be relaxed considerably, allowing cross-sections to be upgraded in class for fire design calculations