Lateral-torsional buckling of box beam with corrugated steel webs

Abstract

Corrugated steel web is folded along the longitudinal direction and has the mechanical properties such as axial compression stiffness corrugation effect, shear modulus corrugation effect, similar to that of an accordion. In order to study the lateral-torsional buckling of box beams with corrugated steel webs (BBCSW) under the action of bending moment load, the neutral equilibrium equation of BBCSW under the action of bending moment load is derived through the stationary value theory of total potential energy and further, along with taking Kollbrunner-Hajdin correction method and the mechanical properties of the corrugated web into consideration. The analytical calculation formula of lateral-torsional buckling critical bending moment of BBCSW is then obtained. The lateral-torsional buckling critical bending moment of 96 BBCSW test specimens with different geometry dimensions are then calculated using both the analytical calculation method and ANSYS finite element method. The results show that the analytical calculation results agree well with the numerical calculation results using ANSYS, thus proving the accuracy of the analytical calculation method and model simplification hypothesis proposed in this paper. Also, compared with the box beams with flat steel webs (BBFSW) with the same geometry dimensions as BBCSW, within the common range of web space-depth ratio and web span-depth ratio, BBCSW’s lateral-torsional buckling critical bending moment is larger than that of BBFSW. Moreover, the advantages of BBCSW’s stability are even more significant with the increase of web space-depth ratio and web depth-thickness ratio.