Journal of Steel Structures & Construction

Of the existing flooring system types, steel flooring systems are often times overlooked due to their material cost. However, this problem can be addressed by prestressing steel and reducing the weight of each element. Through a three-part analysis, this research concludes that using prestressed steel for flooring systems, when in an optimal configuration, is economically viable. The first part focuses on tests to determine an optimal stringer shape for the flooring system between I-beams and trusses. Once it was determined that truss stringers required less steel for their span, stage two focused on finding an appropriate tendon profile with the goal of cost reduction in mind. The final stage used a comparative cost analysis to ensure that the flooring system with the stringer shape and prestressing tendon profile selected in the previous steps were economically beneficial to those who might choose to adopt this method. The results show that the prestressed truss with straight tendons has maximum efficiency.

Nowadays, the power industry prefers using overhead lines instead of burying cables due to cost requirements. In spite of that, a problem lies in the fact that many of the existing older transmission systems are built with minimal or no consideration of dynamic effects. Moreover, demands require taller and more slender towers that may be subjected to heavier dynamic loads, and may undergo larger responses. Consequently, the study of the overhead power line failure and its consequences on the supporting towers is essential, especially when being located close to wind farms with risks of severe vibrations. This is a fact when considering the economic costs of failure of transmission lines, as well as the cascade failure that may happen to adjacent transmission towers. This research aims to study the effect of heavier wind loading on the response of the conductive cables and subsequently the lattice steel tower-cable system. This was achieved by creating a finite element model using computer software (ADINA) and (SAP2000). It is shown that many improvements can be made in current design methods promoting a reliability–based design procedure on designing the transmission line systems near wind farms.

In this paper, the effects of transverse stiffeners for improving the buckling and post-buckling behaviors of thin steel plates under compressive loading have been investigated through consideration of two parameters, i.e. stiffeners number and height. Moreover, the deformations associated with the buckling stability of unstiffened and stiffened plates have been evaluated through detailed comparison. Numerous numerical models have been developed using ABAQUS and the buckling behavior has been studied through performing nonlinear static analyses. Plate’s largest deformation has been considered for comparison purposes which may not be necessarily located in the center of the plate surface. The use of stiffeners by and large increases the load-bearing capacity of the plates; however, it is shown that lack of proper detailing of stiffened plates may unfavorably result in the reduction of the load-bearing capacity and, in general, adversely affect the stability performance of such commonly-used slender members.