Experimental and finite element study of optimal designed steel corrugated web beams

The structural performance of standard steel sections in long-span constructions gradually deteriorates due to wider and slighter webs that tend to buckle. This is the characteristic problem of plane webs. Corrugated steel web plates allow a considerable reduction of weight and increasing the web capacity of the beam. The experimental test results of optimal designed corrugated web beams, fortifying thin-walled steel girders without stiffeners, under load conditions, have been compared with the 3-D plane strains finite elements (FE) model in this paper. The span of fabricated corrugated web beams (CWB) is chosen as 5 m. These optimally designed CWB are exposed to a single concentrated loading, two-point loading, and partially distributed loading, respectively. The design methods for CWB are firefly optimization and hunting search algorithms. The implementation of design constraints is based on the EUROCODE, DIN, and DAST-Ri. 015 code provisions. The load-displacement curves, the residual load capacity, and the failure form of eighteen tested corrugated web beams are inquired in depth along the experimental process. The structural analysis software ANSYS is used for the simulation of the experimental study, the verification of all test results, and the investigation of the behavior of failure forms.