Unified Element and Section Approach to Design of Cold-Formed Steel Structures
Publication: Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 136, Issue 4
Abstract
Slender open-section cold-formed steel members that contain flanges with edge stiffeners may buckle in different modes and with mode interactions. The element design approach (effective width method) has been shown to produce unconservative capacity predictions for a particular class of such members. This paper presents a modification to the effective width method derived from an investigation of the fundamental behavior of edge stiffened flange elements and sections that contain them. The modified element design approach is validated against the results of 913 compression and bending members collected from the literature, where all section and member buckling modes and interactions were evident. A section design approach is also presented which is directly in line with the element approach. The unified element and section approach is shown to provide accurate and reliable design solutions for cold-formed steel compression and flexural members. Proposals for the North American specification for cold-formed steel structures are presented.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Structural Engineering
Volume 136 • Issue 4 • April 2010
Pages: 343 - 353
Copyright
© 2010 ASCE.
History
Received: Oct 8, 2008
Accepted: Jul 22, 2009
Published online: Oct 8, 2009
Published in print: Apr 2010
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