Shear Buckling Behavior of Tapered Steel Plate Girders with Sinusoidally Corrugated Webs

Steel plate girders with I‐section are frequently used in industrial buildings and bridge design as prismatic members that means as members with parallel flanges and rectangular webs. The structural efficiency can significantly be achieved if such members are designed with tapered webs that means with non‐rectangular webs. Depending on the flange inclination and the moment diagram, the stress in the webs of tapered plate girders is significantly affected also as known as Résal effect. Furthermore, the structural efficiency of plate girders can be improved if the flat webs are replaced by corrugated webs. The gain in out‐of‐plane stiffness due to the corrugated webs reduces the buckling sensitivity of the web. As tapered plate girders with sinusoidally corrugated webs under shear forces have not been subject of research up to now, a numerical investigation on the shear force resistance of such girders has been made. The most important findings are presented. It can be stated that the shear force resistance of tapered girders with corrugated webs cannot accurately be predicted by the existing calculation models for prismatic members.