Flexural buckling of axially loaded concrete-infilled double steel corrugated-plate walls with T-section

Abstract

This paper investigates the flexural buckling behaviour of axially loaded concrete-infilled double steel corrugated-plate-walls with T-section (T-CDSCWs). The T-CDSCW is composed of flange and web wall elements and vertical boundary elements. The wall element consists of two bolted-connected steel corrugated-plates with concrete infilled. The composite effect of the components in the wall element improves the load-bearing capacities of the T-CDSCW efficiently and leads to a thinner wall. Therefore, the failure mode of the T-CDSCW may be governed by global instability. With the web breadth relatively less than the flange breadth, the first-order elastic buckling mode of the T-CDSCW is flexural buckling about the asymmetric axis. The design issue of the flexural instability of the axially loaded T-CDSCW is investigated experimentally and numerically in this paper. The load-bearing and deformation behaviours were investigated by an experiment of the axially loaded T-CDSCW, based on which refined finite element (FE) models of T-CDSCWs are established and validated. The FE buckling analysis is carried out to investigate the elastic buckling behaviour of the T-CDSCW and propose the elastic flexural buckling load and the borderline between flexural and flexural-torsional buckling. Then, the inelastic flexural instability of the T-CDSCW is investigated by the FE nonlinear analysis, and influences of initial geometric imperfection are discussed. The normalized flexural slenderness ratio derived from elastic flexural buckling load delineates flexural instability pretty well and bases the design formulas of strength reduction factor. The design formulas proposed in this paper help to understand the axial load-bearing behaviour of the T-CDSCW.