Integral sliding of a 800 T steel roof truss for a cultural and art center building

Lifting of large heavy steel truss is challenging. Collaborative Reporting for Safer Structures UK (CROSS-UK) recently reported the failure of a 40 m long steel truss during lifting operation (Report ID: 1035). The incident was caused by the lack of checking stability and strength of the truss during the large lifting operation. Stress states during construction differ from those in the permanent condition, which should keep track at all stages of construction. This paper presents the integral sliding of a steel roof truss of a culture and art center building. The roof truss has a self-weight of 830 ton and its span is 36 m long. Before starting the integral sliding process, the finite element software Midas Gen was used to simulate the sliding construction process. Based on the site situation and cost consideration, the whole roof truss was divided into three parts and slid into design position in three steps in plan. This plan also was confirmed by the finite element method. The vibrating-wire surface strain gauges were installed on the truss members to measure the stress state of the first part steel members. The measured and numerical simulation results were consistent and showed that the stress state had no relationship with the pushing speeds when using the hydraulics synchronous pushing technology. Therefore, the highest pushing speed was implemented to install parts 2 and 3 of the roof truss. This study shows that using proper numerical simulation method to analyze the stress states of structures during the sliding construction process can offer reasonable decision support for the construction process. The methodology presented in this case study is recommended for construction of large heavy steel truss.