OUT-OF-PLANE ELASTIC BUCKLING OF CLOSE-SECTION STEEL ARCHES WITH NON-UNIFORM DISTRIBUTED LATERAL BRACINGS

Arches in buildings or bridges are usually arranged with distributed lateral bracings to improve their out-of-plane stability. This paper presents the out-of-plane elastic buckling behavior of close-section arches with non-uniform distributed lateral bracings. Firstly, the arch segment between two adjacent lateral bracings is simplified as an equivalent beam with elastic restraints at two ends to simulate interactions with adjacent arch segments, and out-of-plane elastic buckling load of the restrained arch segments is obtained by a numerical method. Referring to the relationship between the end moment and end rotation of a straight beam, the end restraints resulting from adjacent arch segments are considered, and the out-of-plane elastic buckling load of the restrained arch segment subsequently can be obtained by using an iterative calculation method. The out-of-plane buckling loads of steel arches obtained agree well with their finite element numerical results.