Behaviour of cold-formed steel built-up beams under flexural loading

Abstract

Cold-Formed Steel (CFS) built-up beams are most commonly used as structural elements such as columns, beams, and trusses. They are also used to avoid buckling and increase member flexibility by providing flanges and side plates/batten plates. This study describes the flexure behaviour of the CFS built-up beam. Six CFS built-up beams were tested to failure with a Universal Testing Machine (UTM). CFS built-up beams of thickness 2 mm were developed using channel sections put back to back and close to close, as well as a lip and flange plate. The overall deflection and strain against the incremental load were discussed and compared with the control beam without a lip and flange plate. A back-to-back CFS built-up beam with lip a section could withstand 32% greater load under flexure than a backto-back built-up beam without a lip. The Finite Element Analysis (FEA) was performed using the software ANSYS, and there was a high correlation between the experimental and analytical results.

Keywords

• cfs built-up beam
• flange plate
• channel section
• bolted connections
• ansys