Lateral-torsional buckling resistance of composite steel beams with corrugated webs

In the hogging bending moment area, continuous composite beams are subjected to the ultimate limit state of lateral-torsional buckling (LTB), which depends on web stiffness as well as concrete slab and shear connection stiffnesses. The design of the LTB and the determination of the elastic critical moment are produced approximately, using the European Standard EN 1994-1-1:2004, for continuous composite steel beams, but is applicable only for those with a plane web steel profile. Also, and from the previous researches, the elastic critical moment of the continuous composite beams with corrugated sinusoidal web steel profiles was determined. In this paper, a finite element analysis (FEA) model was developed using the ANSYS 16 software, to determine the elastic critical moments of continuous composite steel beams with various corrugated web profiles, such as trapezoidal, zigzag, and rectangular profiles, which were evaluated against numerical data of the sinusoidal one from the literature. Ultimately, the failure load of a composite steel beam with various web profiles was predicted by studying 46 models, based on FEA modeling, and a procedure for predicting the elastic critical moment of composite beams with various web steel profiles was proposed. When compared to sinusoidal web profiles, the trapezoidal, zigzag, and rectangular web profiles required an average increase in load capacity and stiffness of 7%, 17.5%, and 28%, respectively, according to the finite element analysis. Also, the rectangular web steel profile has a greater stiffness and load capacity. In contrast, the sinusoidal web has lower values for these characteristics.