Experimental and analytical study on the shear strength of corrugated web steel beams

Compared to conventional flat web I-beams, the prediction of shear buckling stress of corrugated web steel beams (CWSBs) is not straightforward. But the CWSBs combined advantages of lightweight large spans with low-depth high load-bearing capacities justify dealing with such difficulties. This work investigates experimentally and analytically the shear strength of trapezoidal CWSBs. A set of large scale CWSBs are manufactured and tested to failure in shear. The results are compared with widely accepted CWSBs shear strength prediction models. Confirmed by the experimental results, the linear buckling analyses of trapezoidal corrugated webs demonstrated that the local shear buckling occurs only in the flat plane folds of the web, while the global shear buckling occurs over multiple folds of the web. New analytical prediction model accounting for the interaction between the local and global shear buckling of CWSBs is proposed. Experimental results from the current work and previous studies are compared with the proposed analytical prediction model. The predictions of the proposed model are significantly better than all other studied models. In light of the dispersion of test data, accuracy, consistency, and economical aspects of the prediction models, the authors recommend their proposed model for the design of CWSBs over the rest of the models.