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An Experimental Study on Inelastic Lateral-Torsional Buckling Strength of Singly Symmetric Stepped I-Beams Having Compact and Non-Compact Flange Sections
Recently, as the level of market competition in the structural engineering field continues to rise, structural designers are finding other ways to make their designs stand out. One way of doing that is to make the designs more economical without sacrificing efficiency. As a result, the use of stepped beams and the studies involving it has become more common. Stepped beams are beams that have a sudden increase in cross section along its length. The change in cross section is made by increasing the width and/or the thickness of the flanges along a certain length while maintaining the dimensions of the web. Most of the studies involving lateral torsional buckling of stepped beams are focused on developing equations and studying the effects of symmetry. However, the studies involving actual test experiments are still very limited. Thus, this study has three main objectives. The first objective of this study is to give a brief historical overview on the series of studies involving the lateral torsional buckling capacity of stepped beams and give an idea on its current state of the art. The second objective is to determine if the intuitive expectation that the lowest critical moment always corresponds to uniform bending moment holds true for stepped beams. The degree of symmetry is varied and several loading conditions are observed. The third objective of this study is to determine the actual inelastic lateral torsional buckling capacity of doubly stepped singly symmetric I-beams having compact and non-compact flange sections subjected to two point loading condition and to use the results obtained to determine the applicability of previously proposed equations in predicting the buckling strength of stepped beams. The results are obtained by conducting actual destructive tests on doubly stepped I-beams using a universal testing machine and running simulation tests using the finite element program, ABAQUS. The main factors that are considered for the experimental and finite element analysis are the degree of beam symmetry, the loading condition, the supports, the stepped beam factors and the unsupported length. The degree of symmetry of all the stepped beams analyzed is fixed at 0.7. The unsupported lengths of the beams analyzed are 3 meters and 4 meters. The results obtained from the analysis are compared with the results from design specifications to determine the effects of steps and from proposed design equations to determine the equations’ applicability and safety. Finally, the results revealed that the stepped beams did have an increase in lateral torsional buckling capacity in comparison with the prismatic beams and that the proposed equations are suitable to be used in predicting the strength of stepped beams having compact flanges under the observed loading condition. However, for beams having non-compact flanges, the previously proposed equations produced over conservative results. Further study can also be made on stepped beams with varying degree of symmetries, loading conditions, boundary conditions and stepped beam parameters.
