Out-of-plane inelastic stability and strength design of circular arches in uniform compression.

By considering the factors such as arch section types, initial geometric crookedness, residual stresses, riseto- span ratio and support conditions, this paper presented the out-of-plane stability design curves for circular arches under uniform compression. It can be not only applied in the practical design of arch under uniform compression directly, but also involved in the design of arch under the combination of uniform compression and bending. It indicates that load with constant direction which causes lower out-of-plane load-carrying capacity of arches is more adverse than one with direction pointing to a constant center. Compared with initial geometric crookedness and residual stresses, rise-to-span ratio and support conditions much more affect the out-of-plane load-carrying capacity. However, stability design curves for arches with different rise-to-span ratio and support conditions are unified by using the normalized arch slenderness. Finally, out-of-plane stability design method of arches with hot-rolled pipe section, welded box section and welded I section is proposed by employing stability design curves for columns of type b, c, d in Chinese code (GB 50017-2003) respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]