Collapse Analysis of a Metal Structure

Engineered trusses, made from a variety of materials, have a wide range of applications in civil engineering. A large part of them is used to realize entertainment structures; their structural safety gains therefore much more importance due to the people that can be involved in the collapse, (Giuliani, 2012). The latest collapses of those particular structures in USA and in Europe brought the attention of the society on the study of their safety. In this paper a metal truss structure is taken under consideration in order to identify the causes that could lead the structure through a collapse. In this specific case the errors in the structural design and the human errors during the erection of the structure are taken under consideration. By means of nonlinear analyses on a Finite Element Model (FEM) the failure sequence of this particular structure will be shown.