ANALYTICAL STUDY ON COLD FORMED STEEL FLEXURAL MEMBERS USING FINITE STRIP METHOD

Abstract

To the date, Cold Formed Steel structural members have been increasingly used to improve the strength and performance in practice provided buckling is properly dealt. These cold formed steel members can be produced in a wide variety of section profiles, e.g. Channel(C) sections, Z – sections, angle sections (L), tubular sections and hollow flange section. The escalating demand of economic and efficient materials has favoured adapting the Cold Formed Steel as it has the effect of increasing the yield strength of steel as it works well in to the strain hardening range. In spite of being expedient it suffers a serious disadvantage that it is susceptible to buckling due to its slenderness, mainly under compression. But hollow flange section has high buckling capacity due to its unique shape. The distortional buckling is eliminated by the torsionally rigid hollow flanges and its local buckling capacity is improved due to the absence of free edges and reduced width of the web. The study is focused on optimizing the structural dimensions of cold formed hollow steel channel sections using finite element software ABAQUS 6.16. The most efficient channel section with respect to loads and stresses identified. The sections having breadth smaller than the depth with respect to the adjacent member withstands layer loads and intron subjected to out of plane moments between each other.