PSI - Issue 44

Agnese Natali et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 44 (2023) 2334–2341 Agnese Natali, Francesco Morelli / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2022) 000–000

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displacement curves obtained from the numerical simulations, and Fig. 2b shows the related buckling modes. In terms of buckling resistance, all the different configurations have similar buckling load, but always lower than the one of the intact element. Anyway, looking at the buckling modes, configurations 1 to 4 are always driven by local buckling in correspondence of the reduced sections. These configurations are characterized by different lengths for each reduced section, but rounded corners in the transitional zone from the reduced to the full section. In the fifth configuration, the reduced section has the same length as configuration 4, but the reduction is rectangular shaped, reducing the length of the transition zone. The resulting buckling mode is mainly global with slight local deformations of the reduced parts. This configuration is the one adopted for the testing campaign, being more promising in terms of performance under cyclic load.

a

b

Intact element

First configuration

Second confguration

Third configuration

Fourth configuration

Fifth configuration

Fig. 2. (a) Load-displacement curves; (b) buckling modes for the different configurations of the reduced sections, compared to the intact diagonal.