Analysis of the Stability of a Steel Truss Structure Footbridge based on Abaqus Software

Abstract

Steel truss structure is widely used in bridge construction because of its high strength and light weight. At present, many researches have been carried out to analyse the stability of highway bridges by finite element analysis software, but the society has not deeply researched the stability of small-span footbridges. In this paper, we use abaqus software to build an indoor footbridge with a total length of 9m and a width of 2.5m, and the material chosen is Q235 steel, and the flexural and static analyses of the model are carried out by applying a load of 32,000N on it. The results indicate that the maximum stress of the steel truss structure occurs at the bottom reinforcement plate when the uniform load is applied to the bridge deck. The corresponding magnitude is 4.987 MPa. In addition, the maximum deformation of the structure occurs at the mid-span location, with a magnitude of 0.2026 m. The flexural modes show that the upper part of the truss chord bar and part of the web bar are susceptible to flexural instability. In addition, the linear buckling analysis gives a first order buckling load of 2.72772e6N, while the nonlinear buckling analysis results show that the buckling point load is 4.47124e6N, so the overall stability of the bridge meets the requirements. The main conclusions of this study can suggest optimisation for the design of indoor footbridge and promote the research of abaqus software in the stability of steel truss footbridge.