Bending behaviour of corrugated web beams

The paper is devoted to the behaviour of mild steel structural beams with corrugated web subjected to three-point bending. Semicircular web corrugation in the cross-sectional plane (horizontal) and across the span of the beam (vertical) were investigated both experimental and computationally using finite element technique. In the finite element analysis, test specimen was modelled using commercially available finite element software LUSAS and a non-linear analysis was performed. Corrugation radius of 22.5 and 4 mm thickness, with constant corrugation amplitude to cycle length ratio (HA) and flange thickness of 6 mm were selected as the base sizes. The plane web beams, welded and ordinary rolled, were also tested with both methods to develop the benchmark results. The comparisons between the experimental and the finite element analysis results were satisfactory. It was noted that the vertical-corrugated web beam (VCRx) could carry between 13.3 and 32.8% higher moment comparing to the plane and horizontal-corrugated web beams, for the range of corrugation radius taken. Besides that, larger corrugation radius could sustain higher bending load up to the yielding stage. This attributed to the increment of the second moment of area (I) that has infiuence on the direct bending stresses (sigma(zz)). In addition, reduction in weight could be achieved by using the vertical-corrugated web. This is true for the corrugation shapes and sizes taken throughout this study. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.