Analysis of Overall Stability of a Suspended Dome Structure

The overall stability analysis of an elliptic paraboloid suspended dome structure of span 110m×80m and the corresponding single layer latticed shell conducted by ANSYS is investigated respectively by taking into account geometric nonlinearity, initial geometric imperfection and half-span distribution of live loads. The results show that the coefficient of stable bearing capacity of suspended dome increases by 100% compared with that of the corresponding single layer latticed shell under three kinds of load combinations, which fully reveals the advantages of suspended dome due to introducing the cable-strut system. The single layer latticed shell is more sensitive to the imperfection, and the unsymmetrical distribution of loads has little effect on the coefficient of these two structures.