An aluminum single layered reticular dome is one of the most efficient structures because of the characteristics of a low specific gravity, a high strength to weight ratio and because of the possibility of high quality manufacturing. Such a reticular dome has a high in-plane stiffness through membrane actions which can make the structures thin and light. On the contrary such a thin shell-like dome is subjected to buckling and this bucking gives rise to an essential problem in structural design. The bending stiffness in connections of such domes is already recognized as one of the key factors for prevention of buckling. The present paper investigates the structural characteristics of ball type joints which are to be utilized to connect one members to another ones in the aluminum reticular dome. The first part of the paper concerns beam bending tests, through which the bending stiffness and strength were obtained, the second part compares the experimental results with the simulated ones, and the third part discusses an estimation method to calculate the bending stiffness and strength for designing such an aluminum reticular dome.
