Cold formed steel channel sections with flange stiffeners

Abstract

In recent years the utilization of cold formed steel has been redoubled. This is because high strength to weight ratio of the cold formed steel. The thicknesses cold formed steel members usually range from 0.3 mm to 6.35 mm. The most used cold formed sections are C and Z sections. These sections can be used as secondary beams (purlins) for roof covering, side girts, decks, and panels. Scope of this present study is to investigate the effect on load carrying capacity of cold formed channel sections provided with flange stiffeners. In this project, eighteen numbers of channel sections were analysed by keeping the height to thickness ratio (h/t) as constant and by varying flange width to thickness ratio (b/t) using Ansys 14.0. The h/t ratio and b/t ratio considered are 50 and 25, 35, 45 respectively. The thickness and span of all specimens were kept as 2 mm and 1500 mm respectively. Simply supported boundary condition and two points loading was adopted for both the numerical and experimental analysis. Three numbers of channel sections were fabricated and tested experimentally to check the consistency of results with numerical analysis. The ultimate load and deformed shape of three specimens were obtained from experimental results are compared with the analytical results acquired from Ansys 14.0.