Experimental study on flexural behavior of light steel hollow flange beam with various stiffening arrangements

Nowadays, cold-form steel section is widely used in the construction of steel structure as they proved more efficient as compared to the hot-rolled section. The steel beams are also called as bending or flexure members and are susceptible to lateral torsional as well as distortion buckling, which ultimately leads to reduction in moment of resistance of the sections. To conquer this light steel beam (LSB) is developed. Observation on failure pattern of light steel beam from the previous research shows that it becomes essential to strengthen the flexural members. Therefore, in this study an attempt has been made to study the effectiveness of various strengthening alternatives of the LSB, i.e., the section with and without notch and provision of stiffeners at web and flange. As a result, flexural strength, failure pattern and deflection parameters have been studied. To validate the failure patterns and deflection, the beam specimens were analyzed using ANSYS v 12. The experimental and finite element results reveal that there is an increased in bending strength of 25.6% when the stiffener is provided on web as compared to the other stiffening arrangements. For that reason, an intermediate web stiffening arrangement is found to be better than the intermediate flange sections.