Shear Buckling Analysis of Steel Flat and Corrugated Web I-girders

One of the parameters of the economic design of steel I-girders is the use of thin webs. However, in large spans, the use of deep I-girders with thin web leads to the buckling of the web. In order to achieve out-of-plane stiffness and shear buckling resistance without the use of stiffeners or increasing the thickness of the webs, one possible way is to use corrugated plates in the I-girder web. To understand, shear stress distribution of the web a series of three-point load test was performed on four types of the web; (flat, trapezoidal-, sinusoidal-, and the zigzag-corrugated). A non-linear FE analysis method was used to obtain the shear stress distribution in a flat and corrugated web, since it was not possible to obtain the shear stress distribution from the experimental investigation. Based on this research, it was found that the main failure modes of the current models are yielding or shear buckling of the web when it is under the shear. In addition, it shows that the failure of all beams occurred due to shear buckling of the web without any interaction of the flange. In the other hand, the shear stress along the side of the flange is nearly zero; it is clear that the web takes almost all the shear force. The nonlinear analysis results show that shear stress is maximum and uniformly distributed on the web before the buckling. After buckling, the volume of shear stress is reduced and distributed unevenly. According to the results, there are three types of shear buckling: local, global, and interactive in models.