Behavior of plastic greenhouses under symmetric loading before and after strengthening with tension ties

In recent years, climate anomalies have led to major snowfall and heat waves causing immeasurable loss of life and property. Particularly, sudden snowfall led to the collapse of several plastic greenhouse in South Korea within the last five years. This study proposes a strengthening method that uses tension ties to prevent the collapse of plastic greenhouses. Five full-scale frames were prepared to investigate the strengthening effect of the ties. A frame included a controlled specimen without tension ties, and the other frames were strengthened frames. The variables in this study were divided into two categories: (a) tension tie materials consisting of a fiber rope and a steel wire and (b) pretension forces of 100 N and 200 N. The testing results revealed that the normal frame failed in flexure, and that the failure of the strengthened frames occurred through out-of-plane buckling. The load capacities of the strengthened frames exceeded those of the reference frames without tension ties by 30% to 65%.