Cold‐formed steel beams with corrugated web and discrete web‐to‐flange fasteners

Abstract

AbstractSteel beams with corrugated webs represent a relatively new structural system that has emerged in the past two decades. The thin corrugated web results in a significant weight reduction in these beams compared with hot‐rolled or welded ones. In the initial solutions the flanges were made of flat plates welded to the sinusoidal web sheet, which required a specific welding technology. A new solution is proposed in this paper in which the beam is composed of a web of trapezoidal cold‐formed steel sheet and flanges of built‐up cold‐formed steel members (e.g. back‐to‐back lipped channels or angles or hat omega). Self‐drilling screws or spot welding are used for the connections between flanges and web. This paper summarizes the experimental and numerical investigations carried out at the CEMSIG Research Centre (http://cemsig.ct.upt.ro), “Politehnica” University of Timisoara, in order to evaluate and validate a new technological solution.