Behaviour and design of cold-formed steel beams subject to lateral–torsional buckling

Cold-formed steel beams are increasingly used as floor joists and bearers in buildings. Their behaviour and moment capacities are influenced by lateral–torsional buckling when they are not laterally restrained adequately. Past research on lateral–torsional buckling has concentrated on hot-rolled steel beams. Hence a numerical study was undertaken to investigate the lateral–torsional buckling behaviour of simply supported cold-formed steel lipped channel beams subjected to uniform bending. For this purpose a finite element model was developed using ABAQUS and its accuracy was verified using available numerical and experimental results. It was then used in a detailed parametric study to simulate the lateral–torsional buckling behaviour and capacity of cold-formed steel beams under varying conditions. The moment capacity results were compared with the predictions from the current design rules in many cold-formed steel codes and suitable recommendations were made. European design rules were found to be conservative while Australian/New Zealand and North American design rules were unconservative. Hence the moment capacity design equations in these codes were modified in this paper based on the available finite element analysis results. This paper presents the details of the parametric study, recommendations to current design rules and the new design rules proposed in this research for lateral–torsional buckling of cold-formed steel lipped channel beams.