Abstract: This study investigated characteristics of bifurcation and critical buckling load by shape imperfection of space truss, which were sensitive to initial conditions. The critical point and buckling load were computed by the analysis of the eigenvalues and determinants of the tangential stiffness matrix. The two-free-nodes example and star dome were selected for the case study in order to examine the nodal buckling and global buckling by the sensitivity to the eigen buckling mode and the analyses of the influence, and characteristics of the parameters as defined by the load ratio of the center node and surrounding node, as well as rise-span ratio were performed. The sensitivity to the imperfection of the initial shape of the two-free-nodes example, which occurs due to snapping at the critical point, resulted in bifurcation before the limit point due to the buckling mode, and the buckling load was reduced by the increase in the amount of imperfection. The two sensitive buckling patterns of the numerical model are established by investigating the displaced position of the free nodes, and the asymmetric eigenmode greatly influenced the behavior of the imperfection shape whether it was at limit point or bifurcation. Furthermore, the sensitive mode of the two-free-nodes example was similar to the in-extensional basis mechanism of a simplified model. The star dome, which was used to examine the influence among several nodes, indicated that the influence of nodal buckling was greater than that of global buckling as the rise-span ratio was higher. Besides, global buckling is occurred with reaching bifurcation point as the value of load ratio was higher, and the buckling load level was about 50%–70% of load level at limit point.

Key words: Space truss, Geometric nonlinearity, Initial imperfection, Snap-through, Bifurcation, Global buckling

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