Behaviour of back-to-back built-up cold-formed steel equal angles with complex edge stiffeners under axial compression

Abstract

The application of built-up cold-formed steel (CFS) structures becoming popular in civil engineering fields such as trusses, bridges, transmission towers and railway coaches. This work presents the numerical analysis of axially compressed back-to-back built-up CFS equal angle sections. A nonlinear finite element (FE) model was developed that considered geometric imperfections, material nonlinearity, and intermediate fastener. The published experimental test data were used to compare the FE model, and the results shown good agreement. The effect of the slenderness ratio and edge stiffening direction on the axial strength of back-to-back built-up CFS equal angle sections is investigated by using parametric study.