Experimental investigations of cold-formed steel beams of corrugated web and built-up section for flanges

• Cold-formed steel beams of trapezoidal corrugated web and screwed fastening details.
• Validation test on five different versions of technical solution.
• Detailed calibration tests of connections on the purpose of further numerical modelling.
• Relevant results and graphic comparison related to the performance of tested specimens.
• Concluding remarks on the feasibility of technical solution and further developments.

The steel beams of corrugated web represent a relatively new structural system which emerged in the past two decades. The thin corrugated web affords a significant weight reduction of these beams, compared with hot-rolled or welded ones. In the solutions existing on the market, the flanges are made of flat plates welded to the sinusoidal web sheet, requiring a specific welding technology. A new solution is proposed in this paper, in which the beam is composed by a web of trapezoidal cold-formed steel sheet and flanges of built-up cold-formed steel members (e.g. back-to-back lipped channel sections or angles with turn lips). The connections between flanges and web can be done by self-drilling screws or by spot welding. The first part of the study, summarised in this paper, is devoted to the evaluation and validation of technical solution, including experimental investigations, carried out at the CEMSIG Research Centre of the Politehnica University of Timisoara (http://www.ct.upt.ro/en/centre/cemsig). In a subsequent paper, numerical investigations aiming to optimise the solution and estimate its technical limits for applications will be presented.