Distortional failure and DSM design of cold-formed steel S-shaped beams under uniform bending

Abstract

This work reports a numerical investigation on the distortional buckling/post-buckling behaviors, ultimate strength and Direct Strength Method (DSM) design of cold-formed steel S-beams, commonly used in industrial rack systems. The analyzed beams are single-span, under uniform bending, exhibiting two different end support conditions and 5 cross-sections dimensions. The postbuckling equilibrium paths and ultimate moments are obtained from shell finite element non-linear analysis through the software ANSYS. The reported results evidenced that current codified DSM distortional curve is unable to provide safely strength predictions for the selected beams.