Flexural strength of tubular flange girders

A tubular flange girder is an I-shaped steel girder with either rectangular or round tubes as flanges. A tubular flange girder has a much larger torsional stiffness than a conventional I-shaped plate girder of similar weight, which results in a much larger lateral–torsional buckling strength. Finite element (FE) models of tubular flange girders with hollow tubes (HTFGs) are developed in this paper, considering material inelasticity, instability, initial geometric imperfections, and residual stresses. A parametric study is performed using the FE models to study the effects of stiffeners, geometric imperfections, residual stresses, cross section dimensions, and bending moment distribution on the lateral–torsional buckling flexural strength of HTFGs. These analytical results are used to evaluate formulas for determining the flexural strength of HTFGs.