Innovative steel I-girder under bending having hollow tubular flanges

Abstract

Hollow tubular flange girders (HTFG) overcome the weakness of the conventional I-sections to resist the lateral buckling. This leads to higher capacity, resulting in fewer steel quantities and reducing the carbon emissions from the steel industry. This paper presents a numerical analysis to investigate the behavior of HTFG under bending and validate the AISC design equations. The gain of the bending capacity is found similar in different flange classes but decreases with the reduction of the web class. The capacity for the compact section is higher than the yielding moment, but the section could not be fully yielded. The AISC in slender web is very conservative, unlike for non-compact web. Adjustments of the plastic limit and adaptation in terms of torsion constant are proposed, and the results show good agreement. The reduction of the embodied carbon caused by the material saving after using HTFG is calculated for a case study.

Keywords

• Hollow tubular flange
• Bending moment
• Lateral buckling
• Section classification
• Finite element model
• Sustainability