Review article

Based on the results of many technical examinations of in-service steel double-branch elements, there have been identified various kinds of defects and damages which have a significant impact on the nature of operation and overall stability of the lattice element. The most common of these are the following: misalignment of lattice nodes, missing of individual lattice elements, damage and curvature of individual branches, general curvature of the lattice column in the parallel lattice plane, etc. The currently valid normative documents lack recommendations for the calculation of defective structures, so a method for checking the overall stability of a lattice rod is proposed, which allows taking into account the impact of various defects and damages. Based on this method and modeling of the finite element model, an analysis of the overall stability of the lattice rod was performed and the magnitude of the stability decrease of the element in the presence of various defects and damages was determined.