Lateral bracing of I-girder with corrugated webs under uniform bending

Lateral–torsional buckling may occur in an unrestrained beam where its compression flange is free to displace laterally and rotate. This paper presents the results of the theoretical and finite element analyses of the lateral–torsional buckling of I-girders with corrugated webs and lateral bracing, under uniform bending. It is well known that an elastic lateral brace restricts partially the lateral buckling of slender beams and increases the elastic buckling moment. However, a full study of the effect of lateral braces on lateral–torsional buckling has not been made especially for I-girder with corrugated webs. This paper develops a three-dimensional finite element model using ANSYS [User’s manual, version 10.0] for the lateral–torsional buckling analysis of I-girder with corrugated webs and uses it to investigate the effects of elastic lateral bracing stiffness on the critical moment of simply supported I-girders with corrugated webs under pure bending. It was found that for plastic and inelastic I-girder with corrugated webs, the effect of bracing initially is increased to some extent as the lateral unbraced length increases and then decreased until the beam behaves as an elastic beam. In other words, the effect of bracing depends not only on the stiffness of the restraint but also on the modified slenderness of the I-girder. Also, the results show that Winter’s simplified method to determine full brace requirements cannot be applied to I-girders with corrugated webs. Therefore, a general equation is proposed to determine the value of optimum stiffness (Kopt)(Kopt) in terms of the I-girder’s slenderness.