Assessment of the Current Approach in Eurocode 4 to Determine the Load Capacity of Headed Stud an a Trough of Trapezoidal Steel Sheetings

This contribution reports briefly of a recently finished research project [1] at the Institute of Structural Design, Universität Stuttgart. The main focus of the project was to assess the quality of the given approach in Eurocode 4 to determine the load capacity of headed studs used in trapezoidal steel sheetings in comparison to further approaches/models given literature. Therefore, 17 new push-out tests with steel sheeting within the field of application of Eurocode 4 have been performed. At the moment the existing design rules in Eurocode 4 for headed studs in trapezoidal steel sheeting do not take into account the position of the stud in the trough nor the variety of failure modes. So the investigation was focused on the influence of the position of the headed stud and on the influence of the various geometric parameters on the failure mode. The test results showed that the predicted load capacity acc. to Eurocode 4 overestimates the observed load capacity in a number of cases. Also the constructions rules of Eurocode 4 aiming at a ductile behavior could not always assure this. On the other hand ductile failure occurred though some of the construction rules were not respected. As a result the need for further in depth investigation is underlined.