Can a shell be charged just within is own plan, without any other transversal charge???

Dear all

We are a small team from an architecture school in Paris, we are studying the structural behaviour of a 19th century cast-iron dome in Paris. We are analysing this structure through Karamba, and we have some doubts about the way of modelling curbed radial beams (meridians) and on how to consider the structure loading, that we would like to ask you…

The dome is shaped by arches (meridians), which have a specific geometry that we designed on Rhino using a surface, and lifting it up. Then we linked this surface on Karamba using the “shell” function, we hesitated using the “beam” function, but we decided to use shell because of the specific geometry of arches (they present a hollow web). The problem is that for our model we need the loads to come vertically (self-weight and snow), against the thin side of the arches (which are lifted up shells).

We attached to this message our model, so you can take a look and better understand our question…

Can a shell be charged just within is own plan, without any other transversal charge???

Thanks for the time you spent on our request, we would be very grateful of your help…

Sincerely,
Matteo, David, Mohammad