Flange Buckling Behavior of Trapezoidally Corrugated Web Girders Subjected to Bending and Shear Interaction

Steel girders with trapezoidally corrugated web are widely used structural members in the civil engineering praxis due to their favorable behavior. The stress distributions and the bending-shear interaction of trapezoidally corrugated web girders have been already investigated in the case of compact flanges. Furthermore, the flange buckling behavior and resistance of slender flanges has been recently studied and design proposal has been developed based on the effective width method. In addition the shear buckling resistance is still a very active research field in the case of corrugated web girders. There is, however, a lack of research in the international literature regarding the investigation of the combined bending and shear interaction behavior of trapezoidally corrugated web girders having slender flanges. In the current supplementary study the stress distribution in the flanges under combined loading, the combined imperfection sensitivity and the interaction behavior at ultimate are investigated and presented. To investigate these girders with slender flanges, a recently validated advanced FEM model is used for parametric studies. In the analysis different levels of sophistication is applied for the investigation of the normal stress distribution. Geometric and material nonlinear imperfect analysis using only equivalent geometric imperfections is applied for the determination of the ultimate bending and shear interaction behavior. To promote FEM based design method, imperfection sensitivity analysis is performed using the combination of the pure flange buckling and pure shear buckling eigenmodes together as equivalent geometric imperfections. Based on the FEM results design proposals are developed and proposed for the determination of the most unfavorable additional transverse bending moment in the flanges and the interaction resistance of trapezoidally corrugated web girders having slender flanges.

View content