Abstract:The paper presents the concept of dynamic-instability-based equivalent static wind loads and the elementary method to obtain them and then the method is applied to studying the stability of a single-layer reticulated cylindrical shell.The unsteady aerodynamic forces on the shell are obtained from the wind tunnel test,the dynamic instability of the shell are investigated by the Budiansky-Roth criterion,and then the dynamic-instability-based equivalent static wind loads on the shell are gained.Comparison of stability of the shell under two kinds of equivalent static wind loads,the dynamic-instability-based and the displacement-based,shows that it’s necessary to adopt the dynamic-instability-based equivalent static wind loads to consider the wind actions in the stability analysis of large-span spatial structures.