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Relationships among the genera of the small, woody family Styracaceae and among families of the large, diverse order Ericales have resisted complete resolution with sequences from one or a few genes. We used plastome sequencing to attempt to resolve the backbone relationships of Styracaceae and Ericales and to explore plastome structural evolution. Complete plastomes for 23 species are newly reported here, including 18 taxa of Styracaceae and five of Ericales (including species of Sapotaceae, Clethraceae, Symplocaceae, and Diapensiaceae). Combined with publicly available complete plastome data, this resulted in a data set of 60 plastomes, including 11 of the 12 genera of Styracaceae and 12 of 22 families of Ericales. Styracaceae plastomes were found to possess the quadripartite structure typical of angiosperms, with sizes ranging from 155 to 159 kb. Most of the plastomes were found to possess the full complement of typical angiosperm plastome genes. Unusual structural features were detected in plastomes of Alniphyllum and Bruinsmia, including the presence of a large 20-kb inversion (14 genes) in the Large Single-Copy region, the loss or pseudogenization of the clpP and accD genes in Bruinsmia, and the loss of the first exon of rps16 in B. styracoides. Likewise, the second intron from clpP was found to be lost in Alniphyllum and Huodendron. Phylogenomic analyses including all 79 plastid protein-coding genes provided improved resolution for relationships among the genera of Styracaceae and families of Ericales. Styracaceae was strongly supported as monophyletic, with Styrax, Huodendron, and a clade of Alniphyllum + Bruinsmia successively sister to the remainder of the family, all with strong support. All genera of Styracaceae were recovered as monophyletic, except for Halesia and Pterostyrax, which were each recovered as polyphyletic with strong support. Within Ericales, all families were recovered as monophyletic with strong support, with Balsaminaceae sister to remaining Ericales. Most relationships recovered in plastome analyses are congruent with previous analyses based on smaller data sets. Our results demonstrate the power of plastid phylogenomics to improve phylogenetic hypotheses among genera and families, and provide new insight into plastome evolution across Ericales.

Cold-formed steel (CFS) sections are commonly used in modern roof construction. Most purlin members are of thin-walled open cross section. They are usually subjected to roof loading at the top flange in either an upward or a downward direction. The load application points, where the sheeting/purlin connections are located, are often eccentric to the shear centre, and thus inevitably generate a torsional moment that will induce twisting and/or warping deformations in addition to bending deflection. This type of complexity associated with the loading conditions will be exacerbated by the occurrence of single- or mixed-mode buckling (e.g. overall, distortional and local buckling) due to compression flanges tending to move sideways. The connections between purlin and roof sheeting provide a restraining effect on purlin members by preventing such lateral and twisting movements, and thus have a beneficial effect on their load-carrying capacity. In design practice, this effect should be taken into account from a design-efficiency perspective. To this end, a key step is to quantify the rotational restraint stiffness by using an engineering-orientated model. This paper firstly reports a series of torsional restraint tests (F-tests) for both sigma and zed sections. Two loading directions were examined by adjusting the purlin fixing direction. The rotational angles between the connected flange and sheeting were recorded at each loading step, from which the moment–rotation curves were produced and presented for each test case. A linear relationship has been observed for the moment–rotation relationship from all test specimens. Secondly, a hand calculation model for calculating the rotational stiffness at each connection was developed. In that model, the rotation was deemed to be primarily caused by the localised deformation of the roof sheeting and the distortional deformation of the purlin flange. The rotation caused by the separation of connection was found to be negligible. The model was validated by the experimental test results and an example was presented to demonstrate the application of the model proposed. The rotational stiffness calculated by this model can be used to evaluate the input parameters required for numerical modelling of purlin–sheeting interaction.