Member and connection design of cold formed steel greenhouses

Light steel, which has existed in the construction industry for a long time, has been arriving at an important place by highlighting this existence more day by day. During this process, the usage percentage of light steel in the main bearing elements has increased. It has been started to be preferred in the construction of houses, prefabricated buildings and industrial buildings.Its efficiency comes from to be carried easily as being a light material, being economical, leaving less waste products, decreasing the workmanship faults and being constructed repeatedly. However, there is no comprehensive specification regulating the design of light steel structures in our country. AISI NAS-LRFD American Iron and Steel Institute's North American Specification Load and Strength Coefficient Design Method can be used to design these structures thanks to the provisions accepted by the administrative authorities in our country. Agricultural structures are structures which are used for the evaluation of agricultural areas for production purposes. Thanks to these greenhouse structures, which are also used in our country, more efficient, controllable and diverse productive forms of production can be realized. In the greenhouse production, it is aimed to use glass elements efficiently with the coating material derived from glass and plastic, and it is expected that carrier elements of the building both sustain its components safely and is being integrated into construction plan. It is predicted that these expectations can be realized easily with the features and advantages of light steel structures. Within the scope of this thesis, a greenhouse structure has been designed with light steel elements and connections which are based on maximum requirements and wishes in agricultural context in order to be a guide for both civil engineers and agricultural engineers dealing with agricultural structures. By using AISI NAS Specification LRFD method, the forces and stresses of the structure were determined and their design and calculations were performed. Finally, with the calculations happened in this thesis, it has been shown that light steel provides suitable elements and connections for greenhouse structures.