Cool store design using "Polypanel"  

As far as I know the panels are non-structural.

I’m not totally clear what you are referring to regarding portal action at the wall/roof joint – but in terms of capacity I would presume the (probably steel) structure could be assessed in the same way as any other steel structure.

Hey Timothy,

No design guide reference sorry, but I have a couple of useful docs I would post here if I could. PM me on andy@tutika.nz

 Nic’s kind of right. Polypanel is not highly structural, but everything has a little capacity right? There are plenty of 6x3m bondor site offices and small chillers around without primary steel structure. Much beyond that though, it is common to detail a RHS internal skeleton, and use the polypanel like longspan cladding. 

Due to it’s depth, it can span some good distance under face loads, and can carry some small axial and in-plane shear loads, but controlled by delamination and skin buckling, so be conservative:) 45MPa for a skin compressive capacity is a number I’ve seen recommended from testing as a design value for skin in-plane bending so for sure it’s much much less than fy!

Bondor and Kingspan both publish span tables for normal pressure. Careful with Kingspan type panels as their capacities are asymmetric due to the profiled top skin.

As far as your question, “does the wall-roof connection act as a portal knee?”, I’m positive it cannot.

If the building you’re looking at is so long that you expect a portal mid-length, then it may be that the roof is acting as a diaphragm to carry the lateral loads to the gable end walls? you’d have to ask yourself: are the sheets fixed off along their joining edges?  

I’m as interested as you are to hear from anyone else that has a good design reference for polypanel. 

Cheers