Perforated beams with various strengthening techniques: Fid-Bau Portal

Perforated beams with various strengthening techniques

Choudhari, Vinod A. / Morkhade, Samadhan G.

The use of steel beams with web openings also called ‘Perforated Beams’ has been increasing day by day. The perforated beams are having different merits like increase in flexural stiffness, light in weight, and incorporation of pipes through the openings created in the web. Due to the presence of web openings, there is reduction in the shear strength of the beams. Therefore, it becomes essential to strengthen the perforated beams. There are various alternatives available to strengthen the beams like reinforcement around the web openings and using carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP). Therefore, in this research work, an attempt has been made to study the behavior of perforated beams strengthened with steel ring stiffeners as well as using carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP). The finite element analysis has been performed using ABAQUS software. The findings demonstrated that ring stiffeners are found to best over CFRP stiffeners strengthening against all typical failures. The maximum increase and the minimum increase in strength of cellular beam are 47.59% and 0.17%, due the addition of ring stiffeners around the circular web openings. The maximum increase and the minimum increase in strength of cellular beam by providing carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) strengthening technique are found to be 43.97% and 0.19%. From the results, it also observed that the strengthening techniques will be very much effective for the diameter of openings larger than 0.6D. This is because due to the presence of large web openings, there is a decrease in stiffness drastically. This deficiency of stiffness is restored by the provision of CFRP and ring stiffeners around the web openings. The observed failure modes are local buckling, web-post buckling, shear buckling, and Vierendeel mechanism.