To address the various instability problems in cold-formed steel members, many researchers have mainly focused on developing innovative sectional profiles wherein geometry of the section plays a vital role in enhancing the inherent resistance of such sections against premature buckling. However, the process of forming such innovative shapes is not only complex and time-consuming but sometimes such sections fail to mobilize their complete reserve strength. Hence, a stiffening arrangement of weaker zones for mobilizing the untapped reserve strength is suggested. The contribution of this simple, effective and partly stiffening arrangements, aimed at eliminating/delaying the premature local buckling, is studied both experimentally and numerically and also compared with existing codes. Experimental study was carried out on different simply supported cold-formed steel beams with judiciously proposed stiffening arrangements under four-point loading. An equivalent hot-rolled steel beam was also tested to compare the efficiency of the cold-formed steel beams. The cold-formed steel beams investigated had different width-to-thickness ratio, different geometries and different stiffening arrangements. The test strengths, failure modes, deformed shapes, load versus mid-span displacements and geometric imperfections were measured and reported. The test strengths of the beam models are also compared with the design strength predicted by North American Standards and Eurocode for cold-formed steel structures. To validate the test results further, a numerical study was carried out on such stiffened cold-formed steel beams using finite element software ABAQUS. All these results show that the proposed strengthening system is efficient and economical and allow cold-formed steel beams to reach greater load carrying capacity.

Some of the past studies on cold-formed steel (CFS) battened built-up columns have resulted in the development of new design rules for predicting their axial strengths. However, the main drawbacks of such studies are that they are purely numerical and the numerical models developed for such parametric studies were validated using the test results on similar built-up column configurations, but not the exact ones. Therefore, experimental studies on CFS battened columns comprising of lipped channels are needed for verifying the accuracy of the proposed design rules for CFS battened columns. This paper reports an experimental study performed on CFS built-up battened columns under axial compression. Adequately spaced identical lipped channels in the back-to-back arrangement were used as chords and were connected by batten plates laterally with self-driving screws to form the built-up members. The dimensions of chords were fixed as per the geometric limits given out in the North American Specifications (NAS) for the design of CFS structural members. The sectional compactness of the chords and the overall slenderness of the built-up columns were varied by altering the thickness of the channels and height of the built-up columns, respectively. A total of 20 built-up sections were tested under uniform compression to investigate the behavioural changes in the built-up columns due to these variations. The behaviour assessment was made in terms of peak strengths, load–displacement response and failure modes of the test specimens. The current design standards on CFS structures were used to determine the design strengths and were compared against the test strengths for assessing their adequacy. Furthermore, as discussed in the beginning, the test strengths were used to verify the accuracy of the different relevant proposed design rules in the literature.

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