Cold-formed steel beams with corrugated web and discrete web-to-flange fasteners

Steel beams with corrugated webs represent a relatively new structural system that has emerged in the past two decades. The thin corrugated web results in a significant weight reduction in these beams compared with hot-rolled or welded ones. In the initial solutions the flanges were made of flat plates welded to the sinusoidal web sheet, which required a specific welding technology. A new solution is proposed in this paper in which the beam is composed of a web of trapezoidal cold-formed steel sheet and flanges of built-up cold-formed steel members (e.g. back-to-back lipped channels or angles or hat omega). Self-drilling screws or spot welding are used for the connections between flanges and web. This paper summarizes the experimental and numerical investigations carried out at the CEMSIG Research Centre (http://cemsig.ct.upt.ro), "Politehnica" University of Timisoara, in order to evaluate and validate a new technological solution.