Risk Consistent Estimate of Heat‐Straightening Applications. II: Beams

Abstract

Economical heat‐straightening operations on damaged elements in heavy steel construction require the accurate estimation of the number of heat applications necessary to effect a given repair. An experimental program to provide empirical support to theoretical predictors was devised and executed with the objective of estimating the number of partial‐depth vee heat applications required to repair a specified damage angle in wide‐flange beams. Extending ideas previously implemented for plate elements, simple engineering models based on the theory of reliability were derived using the uniform value of a preselected target reliability index, and theoretically verified with a separate application of spectral analysis in the frequency domain. Parametric studies were conducted to examine the variation of the estimate with the principal statistics of the plastic rotations in the straightening process. Very good agreement was obtained among the estimates using the different formulations.