Shear buckling behavior of tapered cantilever beams with corrugated trapezoidal web under concentrated tip load

Economical method of designing beams often involves the use of variable cross-sections combined with stiffened plates. Further economies in terms of weight reduction can be gained if in lieu of stiffened plates, corrugated webs are used. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the shear buckling capacity of the Tapered Cantilever Beams (TCB) with corrugated trapezoidal webs under concentrated load at the tip and assessing, the effect of corrugated web angle on the buckling capacity of TCB. Four test specimens of TCB with corrugated trapezoidal web were made and tested. Finite element nonlinear buckling analysis was performed and the correlation between the analytical and experimental results was found to be quite good. To assess the accuracy of the theoretical formula of local shear buckling stress capacity, a parametric study of several TCB with different panel widths and angles was conducted. The results showed that by increasing the web angle from 30 degrees to 75 degrees, depending on the panel width and the tapered angle of TCB, the buckling capacity increased up to 14.6%. According to the results of the analysis, a formula is proposed for calculating the local buckling capacity of TCB that allows the incorporation of the corrugated web angle.