Experimental Investigation and Numerical Modeling for Stability of Thin Corrugated Webs in Steel Plates Girders

Abstract

The capacity of steel girders and composite girders generally depends on their web stability. Therefore, webs could be reinforced by stiffeners or a corrugated shape could be used to increase their stability. Of the two previous techniques, the corrugated shape was used in a new pattern similar to the transverse stiffeners, which increases the flexural rigidity of the plate. Then the shear stability of the web is stronger. In the present study, the stability of thin-walled corrugated webs is investigated experimentally and numerically. In the experimental part, five steel plate beams and three composite beams were made using a new corrugated fabric pattern and tested under static load. However, the test results were compared to another previous test of flat web beams. The results showed that the girders with corrugated shape would be had different behavior than the girders with a flat web. Also, the composite girder with the deck slab of UHPC revealed that the deck slab contributed with the web to resist the shear stress. Therefore, the corrugated technique showed that action could be used as an alternative to reinforced the web, especially in the composite girders. Because of this technique increased the shear strength capacity by about 44% than flat web composite girders. All the composite failed due to the web buckled without crushing or cracking the UHPC deck. Where the normalize, shear was reached to 0.7 of the yield shear stress when used a corrugated web. The finite element analysis by the ABAQUS software program was performed, which shows a reasonable comparison between results.