Influence of Corrugation Depth on Lateral Stability of Cold-Formed Steel Beams of Corrugated Webs

The beams of thin corrugated web afford a significant weight reduction compared with hot-rolled or welded ones. In the initial solutions, the flanges are made of flat plates, welded to the sinusoidal web sheet, requiring a specific welding technology. A new solution is proposed by the authors, in which the beam is composed by a web of trapezoidal cold-formed steel sheet and flanges of back-to-back lipped channel sections. For connecting flanges to the web self-drilling screws are used. The paper summarizes the experimental and numerical investigations carried out at the CEMSIG Research Centre (www.ct.upt.ro/centre/cemsig/) of the Politehnica University of Timisoara and, at the end, presents the influence of corrugation depth of web on the lateral stability of the beams.