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Structures
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/structures

Stability design of system scaffold with differential settlement

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Jake L.Y. Chan , S.H. Lo
Dept. of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Differential settlement of system scaffold which is normally ignored in analysis was reported and can lead to
Large-scale system scaffold premature structural failure. A known collapse case of system scaffold with differential settlement is investigated
Stability analysis and presented. Consequently, the use of “permissible limit” or safety factor should not precludes for direct
Differential settlement consideration of second-order effect on a structure resulted by differential settlement. A second-order inelastic
analysis with an efficient curved quartic function (CQF) element co-developed by the first author is carried out to
determine the ultimate load bearing capacity of full-scale system scaffolds in various configurations with support
springs under dominant gravity loads. Based on the finding, this study generalizes that the effect of support
movement on system scaffold has great influence to its ultimate load bearing capacity. The findings of this
research aim to improve the current design practice of large-scale system scaffold by directly considering dif-
ferential settlement at supports if necessary.

1. Introduction for pinned-fixed condition compared to free-fixed condition and such

An early study by Skempton and Macdonald [1] reported a varying
degree of damages from 58 buildings out of 98 buildings subjected to
settlements. Milojkovic [2] summarized that soil settlement could re-
duce a structure’s ultimate load by 41%, followed by 36% of reduction
due to excessive member curvature and 23% of reduction for false in
putlog couplers as shown in Table 1. Specifically, a survey of numerous
scaffold systems by Andersen [3] revealed that 79% of reported scaffold
collapses took place between the height range of 5–15 m. Geotechnical
engineers often regard the effect of settlement or differential settlement
as the controlling criterion for the design of foundation [4], but little
research was conducted on stability of scaffolds under the effects of
settlement.
Allowable bearing pressures for permissible settlement of 25 mm for
footing on sand were proposed by Terzaghi and Peck [5]. The permis-
sible limit of settlement given by Annex H of EN 1997-1:2004 [6] which
consists of parameters for angular distortion, maximum settlement and
differential settlement are more commonly used to ensure structural
and aesthetic integrity of buildings.
Numerous experiments and numerical tests were conducted to in-
vestigate instability of scaffold with practical constraints. The influence
of joint stiffness, initial geometric imperfection, yield stress and load
eccentricity on the structural strength of steel scaffolding structures
were studied by Zhang et al. [7]. Zhao and Chen [8] presented the
influence of screw jack stiffness and found that the influence was larger
influence was negligible for scaffold systems of more than two stories.
Instability of multi-storey door-type modular steel scaffolding systems
with idealized boundary condition was investigated by Yu et al. [9].
Peng et al [10] reported that the critical load under fixed end base for a
8-storey scaffolding system is 2.4 times as that of a hinged base. From
the same study, a 40% reduction was reported for the critical load of a
12-storey scaffolding system under semi-rigid base compared to the
identical system under hinged base.
The reliability of numerical analytical approach considering the P-δ
and P-Δ effects with notional disturbance force was proven by Liu and
Li [11] to be quite consistent with full-scale tests by an acceptable
margin of 11.08% for 3-story and 2-story metal scaffolds connected by
couplers. Increasing a 2-story single-row steel scaffold from 1 bay to 4
bays also improves the load-carrying capacity by up to 2.3 times as
reported by Pang and Wang [12]. The technique of using the first ei-
genmode of scaffold systems by rigorous computer simulation multi-
plied by the P-Δ effects to account for complex geometrical imperfec-
tions of irregular scaffold structures was proposed by Chu et al [13].
The eigen-buckling approach is integrated into P-Δ effects of the scaf-
fold models by using the first eigenmode as imperfection mode and was
studied in this paper.
Direct Analysis (DA) was first included in the 2010 AISC specifica-
tion for Structural Steel Buildings [14] as the primary method for sta-
bility design of structures over the traditional Effective Length Method
(ELM). DA is now considered the more rational design approach over

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Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: lokychan@hku.hk (J.L.Y. Chan), hreclsh@hku.hk (S.H. Lo).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.istruc.2020.07.024
Received 11 October 2019; Received in revised form 6 July 2020; Accepted 8 July 2020
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