Experimental study of the strength and behaviour of reinforced coped beams

A total of 10 full-scale tests were conducted to investigate the strength and behaviour of reinforced coped steel I-beams. The test parameters included the length of longitudinal stiffeners, length of transverse stiffeners, combined longitudinal and transverse stiffeners, double transverse stiffeners, cope depth and cope length. For the coped beam specimens without stiffeners, local web buckling failure occurred in the cope. For the specimens with longitudinal stiffeners only, the general failure mode was flexural yielding of the full beam section at the location of maximum bending moment followed by web crippling at the end of the cope between the longitudinal stiffeners and the top flange of the full beam section. In contrast, the general failure mode for the specimens with combined longitudinal and transverse stiffeners consisted of flexural yielding of the full beam section at the location of maximum bending moment followed by flange local buckling near the loading position.The test results show that the reinforcements were able to increase the capacity of the coped beam specimens significantly and the results also illustrate that in addition to cope depth, cope length also affects the behaviour and strength of the reinforced coped beam specimens. Based on the limited test data, a modification to the current reinforcement details for coped beams was proposed. The proposed reinforcement details accounted for the effects of various cope details. To increase the range of applicability of the proposed reinforcement details, a numerical study is currently underway to consider a wider range of cope details.

Research highlights
► Ten cope beam specimens with various reinforcement details were tested.
► Yielding and web crippling were observed for the beams with horizontal stiffeners.
► Transverse stiffeners were able to prohibit web crippling of the beams to occur.
► Cope details affected the strength and behaviour of the stiffened beams.
► A modification to the existing coped beam reinforcement details was proposed.