Geometric Factors Influencing Structural Ductility in Compact I-Shaped Beams

Abstract

Local and global instabilities are usually treated as separate phenomena in the design of steel beams in buildings. In the past, such a notional decoupling of these local and global manifestations was necessary in the interest of creating useful and practical design provisions for steel specifications. Currently, great emphasis is being placed on ensuring ductile and predictable member level behavior in the interest of guaranteeing adequate systemwide response. The current practice of decoupling localized and global instabilities when determining member response is inadequate if structural ductility is to be correctly predicted. The research outlined herein uses experimentally verified nonlinear finite-element modeling techniques to identify two distinct inelastic modal manifestations that occur in compact I-shaped beams at failure. The existence of the two modes is supported by experimental evidence obtained from the literature, as well as other corroborating finite-element studies in the literature. A b...