Bending Strength of Steel Beams with Corrugated Webs

Abstract

Beams with corrugated webs were tested to failure under uniform bending. The failure was sudden and due to vertical buckling of the compression flange into the web after the stress in the flange reached the yield stress. The test results indicate that the web offered a negligible contribution to the moment carrying capacity of the beam. The test specimens were modeled using finite elements and the computer program ABAQUS was used to perform nonlinear analysis. The finite element model was able to depict the test results to a very good degree of accuracy. Parametric analytical studies were conducted to examine the effect of the ratio between the flange and web thicknesses and yield stresses, the corrugation configuration, the panel aspect ratio, and the stress-strain relationship. Based on these studies, it was concluded that, for design, the ultimate moment capacity can be calculated based on the flange yielding ignoring any contribution from the web.