Experimental Investigations on Welded Built-Up Cold-Formed Steel Beams

Abstract

The present thesis is dedicated to investigate the behaviour of cold-formed steel beams with composite section made of corrugated steel sheets for the web and thin-walled cold-formed steel profiles for the flanges, connected by spot-welding or CMT (Cold metal transfer) welding in the framework of the WELLFORMED research project, taking place at the Research Center CEMSIG of the Politehnica University of Timişoara. It consists of two parts, ?Experimental tests? and ?Numerical simulation?. At first, the tests on small flat specimens subjected to the shear, is executed to see the real properties of material. Then experimental programme continues with specimens, composed of two layers of steel sheets and connected by spot welding or CMT welding in order to comprehend and characterize the behavior of these types of joints. The resistance of the joints is calculated by applying the formulae in chapter 8.4 and 8.5 of Eurocode 1993-1-3. And the comparison between the theoritical results and the actual results from the test is implemented. After that, the experimental programme is applied on five full-scale beams in order to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed solution and to evaluate their performances. Within the framework of the thesis, three out of five beams are performed the test in laboratory due to the limitation of time. In the second part, the finite element software ABAQUS version 6.14 is used to make the numerical simulation to optimize the details of the connections and the parameterization of the solution, respectively.As a general conclusion based on the current study, the results are encouraging and demonstrating the potential of this solution for standardization and industrial manufacturing.

The present thesis is dedicated to investigate the behaviour of cold-formed steel beams with composite section made of corrugated steel sheets for the web and thin-walled cold-formed steel profiles for the flanges, connected by spot-welding or CMT (Cold metal transfer) welding in the framework of the WELLFORMED research project, taking place at the Research Center CEMSIG of the Politehnica University of Timişoara. It consists of two parts, ?Experimental tests? and ?Numerical simulation?. At first, the tests on small flat specimens subjected to the shear, is executed to see the real properties of material. Then experimental programme continues with specimens, composed of two layers of steel sheets and connected by spot welding or CMT welding in order to comprehend and characterize the behavior of these types of joints. The resistance of the joints is calculated by applying the formulae in chapter 8.4 and 8.5 of Eurocode 1993-1-3. And the comparison between the theoritical results and the actual results from the test is implemented. After that, the experimental programme is applied on five full-scale beams in order to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed solution and to evaluate their performances. Within the framework of the thesis, three out of five beams are performed the test in laboratory due to the limitation of time. In the second part, the finite element software ABAQUS version 6.14 is used to make the numerical simulation to optimize the details of the connections and the parameterization of the solution, respectively. As a general conclusion based on the current study, the results are encouraging and demonstrating the potential of this solution for standardization and industrial manufacturing.