A number of structural collapses were caused by the loss of stability. However, themonitoring and detection of instability is rarely studied in both communities ofstructural health monitoring and structural stability. In this paper, a novel yet practicalapproach to detecting instability of civil large-scale space structures will be proposed.The basic idea of this approach is: when buckling initiates, the load-bearingcharacteristics of a member in compression change. The internal force in this memberchanges from an axial compressive force to a bending moment and shear force. Andaccordingly, the stress/strain distribution becomes variant along the member due to thefact that the bending moment along the member is different, while the stress/strainalong the member remains the same before the buckling happens. By identifying thedifference in strain at several different locations in the member, the buckling can bedetected. In this study, a large-scale reticulated shell structure is considered to validatethe proposed approach. A 3-D finite element model of this structure is developed andthe process of losing stability is simulated using ANSYS. The numerical simulationresults have demonstrated the efficacy of the proposed approach.
展开▼
