Investigation on Buckling Behaviour of Scaffold Independent Supporting System Considering Semi-Rigid Nodes

This study investigated the buckling behaviour of the scaffold independent supporting system considering semi-rigid nodes. Firstly, a scaffold independent supporting system without the horizontal and diagonal braces in the middle or/and bottom parts of the columns was proposed. The scaffold independent supporting system consisted of horizontal beams located under concrete formwork, upright columns, and beam–column nodes. There was a lot of free space within the scaffold independent supporting system, which made it possible to conduct other operational work during the curing of concrete. Then, using numerical simulation, the rotation stiffness of the beam–column node was calculated as 37.18 kN·m/rad. According to the normalized moment–rotation curve, the beam–column node was assessed as a semi-rigid node. Finally, a numerical simulation method was proposed to analyse the buckling behaviour and determine the effective length factor of the scaffold independent supporting system, in which the semi-rigid connection was characterized by setting the spring elements on the beam–column node. The results indicate that the column space and column height have effects on the effective length factor of the scaffold independent supporting system. The effective length factor increased with the increase in the column space, whereas it decreased with the increase in the column height. In addition, the initial imperfection had no obvious effects on the effective length factor.

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