The Breathing of Webs Under Repeated Partial Edge Loading

Slender webs subjected to many times repeated partial edge loading repeatedly buckle (breathe) under this loading, which brings about the initiation and propagation of fatigue cracks in the neighbourhood of the loaded flange. This phenomenon leads to a significant “erosion” of the post-buckled behaviour of the web, which would very beneficially affect the limit state of the web if its loading were not repeated. Based on their experimental results, the authors establish user-friendly formulae such as to make it possible entirely to disregard the detrimental effect of web breathing even in the case of repeated loads, but on the condition that the maximum value of the cyclic loading is kept under a certain limit