Engineering Structures 23 (2001) 705714 www.elsevier.

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Nonlinear stability of a simplied model for the simulation of double suspension roofs
D.S. Sophianopoulos *, G.T. Michaltsos
Metal Structures Laboratory, Department of Civil Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, 42 Patision Str., 106 82 Athens, Greece Received 20 August 1999; received in revised form 9 June 2000; accepted 13 June 2000

Abstract The present work deals with the nonlinear static as well as dynamic stability aspects of an initially imperfect dissipative 2-mass, 3DOF model under step loading, introduced as a simplied simulation of a class of double-suspension roofs. Employing a fully nonlinear straightforward analysis it is found that global stability, being the main feature of double-suspension roong systems, is captured by the proposed autonomous conservative model. For realistic combinations of the geometric, stiffness and damping parameters involved the model dealt with is always associated with a stable point attractor response and does not experience either snapping or large amplitude horizontal motions, contrary to recent ndings reported for single suspended roof models. Finally, various mathematical and visualization obstacles were encountered, to be overcome by modern commercial software. 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Nonlinear stability; Suspension roofs; Modeling; Point attractors

1. Introduction The esthetic superiority and the overall structural performance of suspended roofs was long recognized by engineers [1,2], since these structural systems combine stability, economy and satisfaction of special architectural demands, while their application is closely related to major engineering challenges. On the basis of their inspiration and intuitive conception quality distinguished pioneer engineers, for example L. Mies van der Rohe, K. Tange and P.L. Nervi, have designed and realized numerous great buildings with suspended roofs as their main structural component. Starting from the famous Crown Hall at the Illinois Institute of Technology between 1950 and 1956 [5,6], the Tokyo Small Olympic Arena from the early sixties [4,10] and the Paper Mill at Mantua, Italy [3], there exists a large number of applications of the suspension roong system, among which the ones in Dulles Inter-

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +30-1-772-3443; fax: +31-1-7723442. E-mail address: dimisof@central.ntua.gr (D.S. Sophianopoulos).

national Airport (Washington DC 1962), Stadthalle (Bremen 1964), Europahalle (Karlsruhe 1983), PA Tech Laboratories (Princeton 1986) and Church of Fatima (Brasilia 1988) must be quoted. The last 15 years in particular, the advent of powerful computers and the development of sophisticated nonlinear FEM software (ADINA, ABAQUS and others) have enabled engineers to utilize suspension roofs in complicated large scale structures, some of which can be classied among unique examples of engineering excellence. A comparative presentation of earlier and recent applications of suspension roofs is shown in Fig. 1, where the last image (Fig. 1(d)) refers to the Oquirrh Park Speed Skating Oval, belonging to the facilities of the Salt Lake City cite for the XIX Olympic Winter Games of 2002. More specically, single suspended roong systems used worldwide require three-dimensional suspensions and transverse stiffening, since for rather obvious reasons they are sensitive to horizontal vibrations and may lose their stability due to dynamic snap-through [7 9]. A characteristic example of such a system is the one used for the New Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre, depicted schematically in Fig. 2.

0141-0296/01/$ - see front matter 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 1 4 1 - 0 2 9 6 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 7 2 - 9

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Fig. 1. Image representations of four classical applications of suspended roofs: (a) Crown Hall, (b) Dulles Airport, (c) PA Tech Lab and (d) Oquirrh Park Speed Skating Oval.

Fig. 2. Detail of the suspension roof system of the New Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre.

On the other hand, double and multiple suspension roofs may overcome the aforementioned disadvantages of single suspensions with repeated plane (vertical) congurations, which can effectively resist uplift and unbalanced as well upward and downward loading, as illustrated in Fig. 3; an excellent sample of the double suspension roong technique is the one applied for the BITEC (Bangkok International Trade and Exhibition Center), presented in Fig. 4. The accurate nonlinear static and dynamic stability analysis of suspended structures, including of course suspension roofs, can only be achieved through the use of the aforementioned FEM programs, which may simulate the actual structures with models containing a huge number of degrees of freedom. Hence, their platform is usually a multi processor mainframe, which by no means can be considered as available to everyday practice engineers. This is one of the main reasons that in major

engineering experience simplied models with a few degrees of freedom are adopted, in order to initially deal with the more pronounced stability aspects of real continuous structures, provided that these models embrace the salient features of the structures simulated. In doing this and taking into account the most popular suspension roong systems erected, the authors in a series of recent papers [1214,16] investigated the dynamic buckling and stability of a simple 2DOF initially imperfect damped model and its variations under step loading, simulating single-suspension roofs [15]. A variety of evident new ndings were reported, such as sensitivity to horizontal vibrations, limit point instability and consequent snapping with different types of point attractor response, mathematical difculties arising form the duration of motion before the transients decay to zero etc. The present work, in the context of efcient introductory simulation of double-suspension roofs, deals with the fully nonlinear static and dynamic stability analysis of a simplied 2-mass, 3DOF initially imperfect dissipative model, acted upon by a constant directional (conservative) vertical step loading of innite duration. Based on energy principles and on an autonomous formulation it is found that regardless of the values of the parameters involved, the dominant degree of freedom (i.e. the vertical displacement) exhibits monotonically rising (stable) natural equilibrium paths, implying global stability. In this manner, this major advantage of double suspension roofs is veried, and the corresponding dynamic response is associated with a stable point attractor, as expected. Contrary to previous ndings related to single suspension roof models, snap-through phenomena were not encountered (due to the absence of limit point instability), while the resulting horizontal motions were for the cases considered of small amplitude. Finally, the

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Fig. 3. Ground view and details of the double-suspension roong system of the Bangkok International Trade and Exhibition Center (BITEC).

Fig. 4. tems.

Graphic details of double and multiple roof suspension sys-

only difculty emerging in the straightforward dynamic analysis employed was the need of very small numerical integration steps, which resulted to huge output data les; these however were adequately treated with the aid of modern commercial mathematical and graphics software.

Fig. 5. Proposed 3DOF autonomous damped model, simulating a double-suspension roof, under step loading.

deformation n10, w10 and n20, w20 respectively, for which all springs are thought to be unstressed. Furthermore, due to the rigidity of bar B, one may readily write
2 w2h2w1 h2 2+(n2n1) 2(n2n1)(h2/tan a2)

(1)

2. Mathematical formulation 2.1. Geometric considerations Let us consider the dissipative, initially imperfect system shown in Fig. 5, used in the present study as a simple elementary simulation of double-suspension roofs [15]. It consists of four (4) linear springs ki with corresponding dashpots ci (i=1,2,4,5) and two concentrated masses m1 and m2 interconnected via a weightless rigid bar. Supports A and are immovable hinges, while E and Z may freely slide along horizontal tracks; thus springs 4 and 5 remain vertical throughout deformation. Conguration ABEZ depicted in the aforementioned Figure is considered slightly imperfect, i.e. the centers of both masses have already undergone a small initial

which implies that the system under consideration has three (3) degrees of freedom. Clearly, Eq. (1) is also valid for the initial imperfections. In the sequel, if under the action of step loads P1 and P2 the system yields to a new equilibrium position, characterized by displacement components w1, n1, w2, n2, it is evident that the change of the springs length, measured from the initial slightly imperfect (trivial) state, can be written as follows: d1lD1l01, d3lD3l03, d4w1w01, d5w2 w02 where lD1[(xl1n1)2(yl1w1)2]1/2.l01[(xl1n10)2(yl1 w10)2]1/2 (2)

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lD3[(xl3n2)2(yl3w2)2]1/2.l03[(xl3n2)2(yl3 w 2 ) ] with xl1h1/tan a1, xl2h2/tan a2, xl3h3/tan a3, yl1 h1, ylsh2. yl3h3
2 1/2

(3)

and manipulating through the resulting expressions, we reach to a set of strongly nonlinear differential equations of motion in dimensionless form, outlined below: c V )[(x )n (y 21 {(x n n n l1 1 lD1 l1 1 l1 1 1 n c 3r 1)n 2(y w 1)w 1]} 2 {(y l1w 2)[(x l3n l3 lD3 w 2)w 5w 2]}c 2r0 V c 3 2)(y c r 2 [(x w l3n l 3 w 2)r][ 2 5 2 n l D3 2)n 2(y (x l n l w 2)w 2 ] 0
3 3

(4)

(11a)

2.2. Lagrange equations of motion Setting q1=w1, q2=n1 and q3=n2 as generalized coordinates, the corresponding Lagrange equations governing the motion of the foregoing autonomous conservative system are given by: d K K V F 0 (i1.2.3) dt q i qi qi q i

2 zn

(11b)

V c 1 1)n 1 w c 1 4w 1c5w 22 (y w 1)[x l 1 n w lD1 l1 1 c 3 )n (y (y l1w 1)w 1]2 (y w )[x n l3 lD3 l3 2 l3 2 2 w 2)w 2]0 subject to initial conditions 1(0)n 10, n 2(0)n 20, w 1(0) w 1(0)w 10, n 1(0)n 2(0)0 n where V b1 3 1 b3 (y ) k 1 (x n w )r 1 n lD1 l1 1 lD3 l3 2 5(w k 2 w 20)rgrl V 1 b3 ((x 5(w 2)(y k l3n l 3 w 2)r)k 2 2 3 n lD3 w 20)rgrl V b1 3 1 b3 (y 1 (y w ) k w 2) w lD1 l1 1 lD3 l3 1 4(w 5(w k 1 w 10)k 2 w 20)lgl r (n n ) 2(n n )x h
2 2 2 1 2 2 1

(5)

(11c)

with the overdots indicating differentiation with respect to time t. The energy functions involved in the system of Eq. (5) are, as it is known: 1 1 2 2 K m1(n 2 2 1 w 1) m2(n 2 w 2) 2 2 the systems kinetic energy VU (7) (6)

(12)

the total potential energy, being the sum of the deformation energy U and the work of the external (conservative) forces , given by 1 1 2 1 2 1 2 U k 1 d2 1 k3d3 k4d4 k5d5 wP1(w1W10) 2 2 2 2 P2(w2w20) while 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 F c1d cd cd cd 2 1 2 3 3 2 4 4 2 5 5 (9) (8)

(13a)

(13b)

l2

(13c)

2n 1+x n l2

represents the dissipation function of Rayleigh. For the model initially at rest, after introduction of the following nondimensional quantities gP2/P1,zm2/m1,t

(14)

k1 t,lP1/k1l1 m1

1n1/l1, n 2n2/l1, w 10 w 1w1/l1, n 10w10/l1, n 20n20/l1 n10/l1, n iki/k1(i3,4,5) lDilDi/l1(i1,3), bil0i/l1(i1,3), k j c ici k1m1(i3,4,5) x lj xlj /l1, y lj ylj /l1, h hj /l1(i1,2,3)

Elimination of the inertia terms from Eqs. (11a), (11b) and (11)c, i.e. by setting Eqs. (13a), (13b) and (13c) equal to zero, yields the also strongly nonlinear equations of static equilibrium.

3. Numerical results and discussion (10) For the numerical examples that follow, four (4) model cases are considered, corresponding to realistic combinations of the parameters involved; in this manner

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roof structures of average geometry are simulated. These model cases represent low, medium and relatively high roofs, have equal masses and are loaded symmetrically, i.e. g=z=1. Their sets of characteristic properties are: 1 h 3, k 3 k 4 k 51. n 10 Case 1: a1a330, a210, h 200 w 100.01, n 1 h 3, k 3 k 4 k 51. n 10 Case 2: a1a345, a210, h 200 w 100.01, n

1 h 3, k 3 k 4 k 51. n 10 Case 3: a1a360, a25, h 200 0.01, w10n Case 4 is similar to the previous one, except the fact that the vertical springs 2 and 4 poses the 1/10 of the stiffnesses of the inclined springs 1 and 3, which are 2=0.01 chosen identically; for all these model cases h

Fig. 6.

Natural equilibrium paths of model Case 1.

Fig. 7.

Natural equilibrium paths of model Case 2.

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3.1. Static stability analysis Solving numerically the static equilibrium Eqs. (13a), (13b) and (13c) using Mathematica [11], we determine the natural equilibrium paths of the foregoing system. For the rst three model cases the path (w 1,l) of the governing degree of freedom (having the same direction as the external loading) is found to be monotonically rising (stable), while the corresponding paths of the remaining two DOFs the horizontal displacement

components have either one or two local extremes. This can be perceived throughout Figs. 68, depicting the physical paths of model Cases 1, 2 and 3, while for Case 4 the vertical displacement w 1 becomes monotonically rising, after being at rst (for low loading values) slightly negative, as shown in Fig. 9. Hence, the dynamic behavior of the model is rather predictable, at least from an initial viewpoint, judging from the shapes of the presented equilibrium paths. At this point one should

Fig. 8.

Natural equilibrium paths of model Case 3.

Fig. 9.

Natural equilibrium paths of model Case 4.

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stretch out that for Cases 3 and 4 (high roof models) there also exist complementary (physically unacceptable) equilibrium congurations, not shown in Figs. 8 and 9. Their role on the global response of the system is insignicant, as it will be shown in the dynamic stability analysis section. Minor mathematical difculties, due to strong nonlinearities, associated with convergence failure, were faced in the process of solving Eqs. (13a), (13b) and (13c). This problem was efciently

treated by decreasing the size of the relevant integration step, with negligible effect on the accuracy of the results. 3.2. Dynamic stability analysis The system of differential equations of motion described in Eqs. (11a), (11b) and (11c) are thereafter dealt with numerically as a system of six (6) rst order ODEs, via the modied RungeKuttaVerner 7th order

Fig. 10. Phase plane portraits of model Case 1 for l=0.50, revealing a stable point attractor response.

Fig. 11. Phase plane portraits of model Case 2 for l=0.30, revealing global stability (point attractor).

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scheme, which yields a minimal error O(h7), with h being the integration step. In doing this, although the amount of damping accounted for was quite realistic, the numerical integration procedure lead to overow for h0.0005. Hence, a smaller step size was used, and in order to comprehensively visualize the long term dynamic behavior, associated for all cases with a stable point attractor response, huge output data les were required. These were retrieved via Microcal Origin

software, producing the corresponding phase plane portraits of Figs. 1014, valid for Cases 1, 2 3 and 4 (for two loading values) respectively. From these plots it is directly perceivable that for all model cases dealt with the global dynamic response are stable, which is the primary advantage of double-suspension roofs, successfully captured by the proposed simulation. Moreover, the vertical vibrations evaluated were of small amplitude, the

Fig. 12. Phase plane portraits of model Case 3 for l=0.50, associated with a stable point attractor response.

Fig. 13. Phase plane portraits of model Case 4 for l=0.03, corresponding to negative values of the vertical displacement of mass 1 (of the physical path), revealing a stable point attractor.

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snap-through phenomenon totally absent and the effect of complementary xed points minimal, contrary to recently reported results concerning simple models of single suspended roofs. Thus, the proposed simplied autonomous 3DOF model can serve as an efcient tool for the understanding of the main features of double suspension roofs and offers a rst insight on the well established advantages of this popular roong system.

4. Conclusions The most important conclusions drawn from the present study are the following: A simplied 3DOF autonomous model has been introduced, which captures the salient features of double suspension roofs, being local and global stability and small amplitude horizontal motions. All these ndings were established through a fully nonlinear straightforward dynamic stability approach based on the energy method. Limit point instability and consequent snapping were not encountered, for realistic combinations of the models parameters, contrary to previously reported results for single suspension roof models. Minor mathematical and visualization difculties, due to the strongly nonlinear nature of the equations of the problem, were successfully overcome using modern commercial software.

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Fig. 14. Phase plane portraits of model Case 4 for l=0.06, corresponding to positive values of the vertical displacement of mass 1 (of the physical path), revealing a stable point attractor.

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of asymmetrical suspended roofs under step loading. Comp Mech 1998;21(4/5):38997. [15] Michaltsos GT, Sophianopoulos DS. Nonlinear dynamic stability of 3-D.O.F. imperfect damped system under step loading. In: Proceedings of the 3rd National Congress on Computational Mech-

anics. (Volos, Greece, 1999): University of Thessaly, vol. 1, 1999:27380. [16] Sophianopoulos DS. Point attractors and dynamic buckling of autonomous systems under step loading. Int J Solids Struct 1999;36(35):535785.