Critical buckling coefficient for simply supported tapered steel web plates

Tapered girders emerged as an economical remedy for the challenges associated with constructing long-span buildings. From an economic standpoint, these systems offer significant advantages, such as wide spans, quick assembly, and convenient access to utilities between the beam's shallow sections and the ceiling below. Elastic-local buckling is among the various failure modes that structural designers must account for during the design process. Despite decades of study, there remains a demand for efficient and comprehensive procedures to streamline product design. One of the most pressing requirements is a better understanding of the tapered web plate girder's local buckling behavior. This paper conducts a comprehensive numerical analysis to estimate the critical buckling coefficient for simply supported tapered steel web plates, considering loading conditions involving compression and bending stresses. An eigenvalue analysis was carried out to determine the natural frequencies and corresponding mode shapes of tapered web plates with varying geometric parameters. Additionally, the study highlights the relative significance of various parameters affecting the local buckling phenomenon, including the tapering ratio of the panel, normalized plate length, and ratio of minimum to maximum compressive stresses. The regression analysis and optimization techniques were performed using MATLAB software for the results of the finite element models to propose a separate formula for each load case and a unified formula covering different compression and bending cases of the elastic local buckling coefficient. The results indicate that the proposed formulas are applicable for estimating the critical buckling coefficient for simply supported tapered steel web plates.