Parametric study of compound cold-formed steel sections as flexural members

Abstract

This paper presents a parametric study on compound cold-formed steel sections as flexural members. The compound members are used to sustain higher load and solve the problems of local buckling and lateral torsional buckling. The aim of this study is to investigate the strength of compound cold-formed steel section subjected to pure bending. Moment capacity of the compound section is calculated in accordance to Eurocode 3. The compound cold-formed steel sections proposed in this study are made up of two cold-formed steel C-section and hot-rolled plates. Steel plates with thickness of 3 mm to 8 mm are added to the cold-formed double C-section with the purpose to increase the bending capacity. From the comparison, moment capacity of compound sections give higher value as compared to cold-formed steel C-section with the comparison ratios range between 1.15 and 3.30. Results from the study show that compound cold-formed steel sections able to enhance the strength in resisting pure bending by adding steel plate at the flanges and web of the section. On the other hand, finite element modeling using ANSYS is carried out on two of the selected compound cold-formed steel sections and the results show good agreement with analytical results.