Design rules for steel arches—In-plane stability

Steel arches are frequently occurring structures in constructional and architectural design. However, a set of practical design rules is not available in codes. In this paper, a set of design rules for in-plane loaded steel arches is presented. Furthermore, the background research of these rules is illustrated. Stiffness and strength requirements are briefly discussed. However, attention will be mainly focused on in-plane stability of steel arches. Load carrying capacities of steel arches according to the proposed design rules are checked against finite element calculation results. Several types of non-linear finite element calculations have been used. The outcome of non-linear finite element calculations are also compared with information found in literature. Calculations have been carried out for a basic steel arch for four different load cases. Then, several parameters of the basic arch are varied to study their influence on the in-plane stability of steel arches (Verstappen (1996)).