Hysteretic out-of-plane behavior of the Temcor joint

The Temcor system is very popular for building single layer lattice domes. The system is composed by double T aluminum extruded bars, six of them are joined together in the nodes, where are connected to a couple of circular gusset plates by means of bolted connection. This system works satisfactory under static symmetrical loading conditions in a membrane stress regime, but no sufficient information is available in case of non symmetrical loading conditions, when the out-of-plane behavior of the joints is requested. This paper is devoted to analyze the hysteretic behavior of the typical Temcor joint in full scale, under out-of-plane cyclic loading conditions, by means of both experimental and numerical approaches. The test results emphasized the main characteristics of the behavior of this joint beyond the elastic range and up to the collapse. The experimental hysteresis curves have been compared with the ones coming from an ad hoc numerical model, giving rise to a very satisfactory agreement. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.