Metal roof panels with stone wool cores are widely used in large-span roofing systems. Their finite stiffness and the damping effect of stone wool cores affect the fluctuating characteristics of the wind pressure transmitted through the roof panel, although this is rarely considered in current structural design. In this paper, the impact of the finite stiffness and damping properties of the roof panels on the transmission of simple harmonic loads with varying frequencies is first investigated. Unlike panels with infinite stiffness, the limited stiffness of the roof panel amplifies the reaction at their support corners, while the damping effect of stone wool cores significantly attenuates vibrations under high-frequency harmonic excitations. For a simply supported beam model with a 16-m span, the effect of the roof panel performance on its midspan bending moment is examined under harmonic excitation across various frequencies. In the absence of damping, the finite stiffness of the roof panel excites vibrations in the panel itself, increasing the midspan bending moment of the beam. However, with damping considered, the midspan bending moment of the simply supported beam significantly decreases under high-frequency excitation. The application of an artificially generated wind pressure time–history to this beam model reveals a reduction of approximately 20% in the maximum bending moment compared with the conventional design that assumes a rigid roof panel. This suggests the importance of considering the actual mechanical properties of roof panels in wind-induced response analysis for roof structures.
Jiang et al. (Thu,) studied this question.