Publication

A Design Approach for Complex Stiffeners

October 19, 2000

This paper presents a design approach for laterally braced cold-formed steel flexural members with edge stiffened flanges other then simple lips. The design method for flexural members given by Schafer and Pekoz (1999) is used here for designing these complex stiffeners. The method integrates distortional buckling into the unified effective width approach currently used in most cold-formed steel design specifications. A finite element method was first used to investigate the post-buckling behavior and carry out initial geometric imperfection sensitivity studies for various types of stiffeners. Then parametric studies were carried out for different types of stiffeners to compare the moment capacity determined by the finite element method, AISI (1996) and the proposed design approach for flexural members given by Schafer and Pekoz (1999).

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Publisher

University of Missouri – Rolla

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