LOAD-CARRYING CAPACITIES OF SYSTEM SCAFFOLD STRUCTURES WITH DIFFERENT TYPES OF BRACING

This research focuses on the loading capacity of scaffolds with different types of bracing. The scaffolds without bracing and with four kinds of bracing were included in the test program. The material test and member test were first conducted in this study to obtain the material properties and the connection parameters for comparison. It was observed that the ultimate tested loads of specimens with bracing are much greater than those of the specimens without. Discussion turned to ultimate load, critical buckling load, and failure mode for all specimens based on the test results. In addition, software SAP2000 was used to predict scaffold strength. It was found that the discrepancy between ultimate strengths for scaffolds with and without bracings is limited because only vertical loads were applied to specimens. The predictions of ultimate strength became different for the scaffolds with and without bracings as long as the notional horizontal forces, which were used to simulate the initial imperfection, were applied on the scaffolds. Despite the expectation that the four bracing types would yield distinguishable results, the SAP2000-computed ultimate strengths for the bracings were quite similar. Therefore, a more realistic model was adopted to investigate the strength by including effects due to both 2nd -order geometric and simple material nonlinearity.