Modernization and urbanization world-wide have led to the increase in many high rise buildings, industries and other commercial buildings. These structures incorporate large spans with column free spacing, urging the need of roofing system that can structurally support them. Folded plates and shell structures are those types of roofing systems that can support these large span structures, structurally as well as aesthetically. Folded plate structures have gained popularity and are being used extensively in Europe, America and Asia. Folded plates have wide range of applications as roofing systems in industrial structures, ware houses, coal bunkers, cooling towers, stair cases, auditoriums, etc. The present work is to analyze a northlight folded plate of span 20 meters, height 2 meters, manually by adopting an appropriate method of analysis which takes into account the effect of distortion for longitudinal stresses and transverse moments. The Whitney method is the appropriate method to analyze the northlight folded plate which considers the end plates as cantilevers. This method of analysis is a simplified mathematical approach in which the number of simultaneous equations to be solved is reduced to two. An attempt is made to model the same using STAAD.Pro.
