Orthotropic Model for the Analysis of Beams with Corrugated Steel Webs

A flat orthotropic finite element model for steel and composite beams with corrugated webs is presented in this paper. The target of the authors is to improve computational efficiency and to reduce input time by means of material or-thotropic equivalence. The results obtained with the simplified model proposed in the paper are compared to both the available outputs from experimental tests and other numerical analysis done with full 3D models. Both elastic and plastic behaviours are investigated. Buckling loads of corrugated steel webs under different loading cases are studied in detail. A parametric study of the 2D “flat” equivalent model is presented in order to investigate the influence of geometric parameters on the structural behavior and to check the robustness of the simplified method in predicting different failure modes. Finally the effect of mesh size is studied on a control specimen. Good overall results of this procedure are demonstrated