Available online at www.sciencedirect.

com

Procedia Engineering 40 (2012) 280 285

Steel Structures and Bridges 2012

Dynamic of billboard thin plate

M. Nagyova*, M. Psotna and J. Ravingera
a
Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Radlinskho 11, 81368 Bratislava, Slovakia

Abstract

The authors of the paper designed the project of the structure of billboard with size 8x18 m. The design includes
reinforced concrete foundations, steel vertical column, two advertising boards. The grand view of boards arranged in V
with 30 angle. For the possibility of emplacement advertising films ladders and walkways as well as supporting structure
for mounting lights must be built. Nowadays in place of sticking promotional material a special film is used attached around
the perimeter of grid system covered by the thin steel plate. The geometric non-linear theory of large deflections must be
used for a description of behaviour of such a plate. Thin steel sheet changes its own circular frequency depending on the
load level. In case of the wind load, it is necessary to analyze the possibility of resonant phenomena, as well.

2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and review under responsibility of University of ilina, FCE, Slovakia.
Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
Keywords: thin-walled structure, post-buckling behavior, natural frequency, bifurcation point

1. Introduction

The billboard structure is shown in Figures 1 and 2. The conditions of foundations were quite difficult. The
level of the water was at 0.7 m below the ground. Under the ground level 3 m thick sandy clay layer was
located, which was replaced by a layer of gravel under the designed foundations. The base plate was carried out
gradually. At first the 0.2 m thick cemented base layer was above the level of groundwater. Then "concrete
cages" with anchoring bolts were placed and cemented. At the end, the base above ground was carried out.
In place, the supporting column was assembled from two pieces of steel pipe. Billboard tables were
assembled separately too. The installation of billboard was realized by mobile crane (Fig. 3).
During the design of the billboard many engineering tasks must be managed. In the design of foundations is
necessary to qualify the condition for "flipping". An open question is the possibility of counting passive
pressures on the walls of the foundations, as well as counting the soil layer above the foundation. Each
responsible designer must take on risk. Vertical steel pipe is rigid enough to be able to resist twisting and
torque. There was no problem to consider the resultant wind pressure in the quarter of a rectangular area.

* E-mail address: monika.nagyova@stuba.sk

1877-7058 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2012.07.094
 M. Nagyov et al. / Procedia Engineering 40 (2012) 280 285 281

2. Statics of thin steel sheet

Special attention was paid to the "cladding" of billboards - thin sheets. For the mentioned area of the
billboard an analysis was performed of thin steel sheet, whose thickness was 0.5 mm and the width was 400
mm. The results are processed in Figs. 4 and 5. These results allow us to make the following comment. If we
assume that the plate is simply supported on opposite sides and the effect of Poisson constant is neglected, for
the displacement in the middle we have a well-known relationship =5/384*q*l4/EI. If we consider the load
level q = 0.001 N/mm2 (this value corresponds to 100 kg/m2), than the evaluated deflection is 152.3 mm. The
intended load-level is real, but the result of deflection is "completely out". But, if we realize a nonlinear
analysis, taking into account that the horizontal movements in the supports are prevented, the evaluated
deflection at the considered load level is 2.15 mm. It is already quite acceptable value since the margin to the
ratio is 400/2.15 = 186. How interesting can the following fact be. If we consider the edges build-in, the linear
deflection is 5 times lower than the deflection in case of simply supported sheets (30.6 mm). On the level of
load q = 0001 N/mm2 in case of non-linear analyzes the deflection reaches 2.01 mm what is only slightly less
than in the case of space supporting.

The linear deflection of rectangular plates is 3.5 times lower than the deflection of the beam obtained from
unit plate strip of this board that is 43.5 mm. If we implement a nonlinear analysis, the deflection of a square
plate is 1.41 mm, which is only 2.15/1.41 = 1.52 times less than the deflection of the beam. This result indicates
that the effect of lateral reinforcement is relatively small.

18 m

8m

30 000 kg steel

24 m

1.8 m
100 m3
renf.concrete

Fig. 1: The scheme of the billboard structure Fig. 2: View of the top of the billboard structures
282 M. Nagyov et al. / Procedia Engineering 40 (2012) 280 285

3. Dynamics of thin steel sheet

One definition of the dynamics task says that we must accept the inertial forces of the mass. To be able to
capture the dynamic phenomena for large deflections, the conditions for geometrically nonlinear strain must be
accept. For the descriptions of the dynamic process the Hamiltons principle has been used in increments. Note:
The incremental formulation is not an incremental process. In a dynamic process, in any time interval, the
variation of the kinetic and the potential energy plus the variation of the work of the external forces equals.

For the elongation, the terms of the second order must be accepted. For simplicity and illustration the
derivation in the x axis is stated in the case of rod system. For the two-dimensional task, it is necessary to add
links to the direction y.

1 2 1 2
Hx u,x  u,x  w, x  z .wxx (1)
2 2

We suppose the linear elastic material V EH  H 0  , where index 0 indicates the initial strains. An
important detail is the correct definition of the strain increment. The increment of the strain and the variation of
the increments are
1 1
'H 'u ,x  u ,x .'u ,x  'u ,x 2  w,x .'w,x  'w,x 2  z .'wxx (2)
2 2
G'H G'u,x  u,x .G'u,x  G'u,x .'u,x  w,x .G'w,x  G'w,x .'w,x  z.G'wxx , (3)

where is the sign of the variation.

With some modification we can obtain a system of conditional equations

K M 'D  K INC 'D  FINT  FEXT  'FEXT 0 (4)

where K M is the mass matrix, K INC - is the incremental stiffness matrix - is function of displacements of
the system, f INT - is vector of internal load, f EXT - is vector of external load, 'f EXT - is increment of
external load, 'D - is vector of increment of displacements acceleration, 'D - is vector increment of
displacements.

In the case of static behaviour the inertial forces K M 'D 0 are neglected. For the solution, the incremental
approach as well as Newton-Raphson iteration could be used. The stable and unstable branches of solutions
could be distinguish by the properties of the incremental stiffness matrix K INC .
The natural circular frequency is obtained from the equation K INC  Z 2 K M 0 , where the incremental
det
stiffness matrix takes into account the level of loading and initial imperfections.

Unloaded beam, respectively square plate strip, gets its natural circular frequency with the well-known
S 4 EI
relationship Z 2 2120.4 s  2 .
JAl 4
S 4 EI
At the loading level q=0.001 N/mm2 the natural circular frequency is Z12 4022000.0 s  2 .
JAl 4
 M. Nagyov et al. / Procedia Engineering 40 (2012) 280 285 283

Fig. 3: Installation of the billboard structure

p [kN/m]
1.0
p
A
A
B t A
t
A B
2
0.5 B l
2 b=1 m
E=210000 MPa
l=400 mm
t=0.5 mm

0 1.0 2.0 [mm]

2.0*106 4.0*106 2 [s-2]
p [kN/m]
p=1kN/m linear deflection
0.00
A=152.38 mm, B=30.476 mm

p=0 A2=2120.6 s-2

p=0 B2=10899.0 s-2

0 0.1 0.2 0.3 [mm]

2 -2
5000 10000 1500 [s ]
Fig. 4: Dependence of deflection on natural circular frequency for "unit" plate strip
284 M. Nagyov et al. / Procedia Engineering 40 (2012) 280 285

p [kN/m2]
2.0

p [kN/m2]
linear
0.1 0.3 0.5 1.0 2.0
1.5
b / p 3.52 2.5 1.25 1.2 1.22 1.22
3 p

p p t b
1.0 b=
l
E=210000 MPa
b l=400 mm
t=0.5 mm
0.5
b - beam
p - plate

0 1.0 2.0 [mm]

Fig. 5: Comparison of steel plate and "unit" plate strip of steel

p [kN/m]
p 0.1

w0
b
l w0 =01 sin x/l+ 02 sin 2x/l
E=210000 MPa 01=1.0 mm, 02=0.1 mm
l=400 mm
bifurcatin point
t=0.5 mm
0.0 stable path thick line
b=1 mm
unstable path thin line
b
mode of buckling
2

-1.0 -0.5 0 0.5 1.0 1.5 b [mm]

2.5*104
5*10 4
7.5*104 2 [s-2]

mode of buckling

Fig. 6: The "snap- through" effect of the plate strip with initial deflection
 M. Nagyov et al. / Procedia Engineering 40 (2012) 280 285 285

p [kN/m2]
2.0

p [kN/m2]
linear
0.1 0.3 0.5 1.0 2.0
1.5
b / p 3.52 2.5 1.25 1.2 1.2 1.22
2 p

p p t b
1.0 b=
l
E=210000 MPa
b l=400 mm
t=0.5 mm
0.5
b - beam
p - plate

0 1.0 2.0 [mm]

Fig. 7: The "snap- through" effect of the plate strip for different shapes of initial deflection

Interestingly, the frequency of simply supported beam (plate strip) at the higher levels, of is almost the same
as the frequency of the build-in beam.

A serious problem in the behavior of thin steel sheets is the "snap - through" effect of buckling surface.
Part of the results is presented in Figures 6 and 7. If the initial deformation will "shape in mode 2" (the shape
identical to the shape of the unstable branch in case of "snap- through"), there is no "snap- through" effect.
Note: In that case of the initial imperfection there are larger amplitudes of deformation.

4. Conclusion

Thanks to the implemented non-linear static-dynamic analysis it is possible to reduce the thickness of the
steel sheet of billboard cladding panels. An important question is how to snap the thin steel sheets to the metal
supporting grid system. High natural circular frequency may contribute to the fatigue violation.

Acknowledgements

This paper has been supported by Slovak Scientific Grant Agency No. 1/0629/12.

References
[1] Bolotin, V. V.: The Dynamic Stability of Elastic System. CITL. Moscow, 1956 (In Russian. English translation by Holden Day. San
Francisco, 1994.)
[2] Clough, R.W. Penzien, J.: Dynamics of Structures, McGraw-Hill, New York. 1993
[3] Nagyov, M. Psotn, M. Ravinger, J.: Stability and Friction. An International Journal for Engineering and Information
Sciences. 2010 Vol. 5. No 3. 2010, pp 63 70.
[5] Psotn, M. Ravinger, J.: Post-Buckling Behaviour of Imperfect Slender Web. Ingineering Mechanics,Vol, 14, No. 6, 2007, s. 423-
431.
[6] Ravinger, J.: Vibration of an Imperfect Thin-walled Panel. Part 1 : Theory and Illustrative Examples. Part 2: Numerical Results and
Experiment. Thin-Walled Structures, 19, 1994, 1-36.