Design and experiment of high load-bearing acrylic connection node for the world's largest acrylic spherical vessel

Abstract Acrylic is a kind of polymer material and gradually applied to load-bearing components. The working stress ultimate bearing capacity the acrylic structure are main design indexes. Aiming at world’s largest spherical vessel, structural design, finite element analysis full-size prototype tensile test new connection node were carried out in this paper. This will bear 90 kN tension force for 20 years. According viscoelastic characteristics environment, should be controlled below 3.5 MPa long term used. At time, greater than 6 times load. stress-strain curve acrylic, its strength about 75 MPa. There no obvious plastic deformation after fracture, showing brittle fracture. failure previous structures proposed Its performance improved by reducing cutting amount nodes, optimizing embedded part avoiding sharp corners. A 1/4 symmetrical model established FEA software, nonlinear problems such as nonlinearity friction contact solved method. results show that maximum principal 2.92 relative error between experimental 7.24%, indicating credible. load can reach 1000 kN, which 11 occurs corner groove, instead point. Therefore, concentration caused corners avoided structure.