1.

INTRODUCTION TO TRUSSED ROOF STRUCTURES

Roof trusses become necessary when sloping roofs have to be provided in the region of
heavy rainfall or snowfall. Roof trusses also become necessary for large span structures
like workshops, warehouses, industrial and institutional buildings to support their sloping
roofs. For a building with no interior supports and the exterior walls for span more than 12
m, a roof truss will be a better arrangement to support the roof. For example industrial
buildings are single storied structures described by their low height and no interior floors, walls or
partitions. The roofing system for such buildings is truss with roof covering material. Trusses are
triangular formations of steel sections in which the members are subjected to basically axial forces
due to design load.
ROOFING

JOINTS

TRUSS
MEMBERS

SUPPORT

Fig. 1 Plane truss for an industrial building

The main function of truss is to span long lengths in the place of solid web girders. When
the design load lie in the plane of truss it is known as plane truss (fig.1) but when the
design loads are applied in three dimensional planes then such truss is termed as space
truss (fig.2).

Fig. 2 Space truss, Turbhe Railway Station, Navi Mumbai, India.