A Study and Reliability Analysis of Composite Steel Structure Under Different Truss Element

Composite materials have been used extensively to build truss structures owing to their remarkable properties. Composite truss structures have attracted tremendous research interests due to their superior strength and performances, and have been utilized in the construction of civil structures. Compared to other structural materials, such as concrete, structural timber composite steel has a considerably higher variability of the strength properties both within and between members. The variability within a timber member is not considered in engineering design, where each member is treated under the assumption that it is homogeneous, i.e. the strength is assumed to have a constant low value along the member. The advantage of the low probability that high stresses coincide with low strengths is however not accounted for and may give an extra safety margin. The reliability of structural systems has to be verified against failure caused by extreme effects, such as fire and seismic effects. To the best of the authors' knowledge, there is a lack of studies in the literature on comprehensive reliability calculation of complex structural systems; the available studies mainly deal with the reliability calculation of simple, separated elements. This paper compares and provides a study of various levels of research work done in computational structural analysis. The crust of our review focuses on the analysis of truss, complex or simple because truss is the most widely used and fundamental building block of any structure.