Design procedure for the web-post buckling of steel cellular beams

This research presents a study about the structural behavior of steel cellular beams, focused on the web-post buckling. The main objective of this study is to propose a new formulation to calculate the shear resistance of cellular beams for this phenomenon, based on laboratory tests and numerical analysis. Series of tests were performed in this work, with full-scale steel cellular beams. In these experiments, vertical and lateral displacements were measured, as well as web-post deformations. The steel mechanical properties of these beams were determined by tensile testing. A numerical model was proposed, developed in ABAQUS software, to perform parametric analysis. From these numerical models, processing 597 cases, a new formulation to determine the shear resistance in cellular beams for the web-post buckling was proposed, based on resistance curves. The proposed formulation was verified in several situations of geometry and material properties, presenting compatible results with those obtained numerically, and showing better accuracy than those available in the literature.