Investigation Of Aluminium Tubular Sections With Cross Stiffeners Subjected To Concentrated Transverse Loads

In recent years,aluminium alloy has been rapidly developed and widely used in the construction field at home and abroad because of its light weight,easy processing,good corrosion resistance and other good properties.Aluminum alloy members are commonly employed as purlins,decks,cladding rail,floor joists.These members often subjected to concentrate load and reaction force,which would result in web localized failure.Up to now,the majority of existing studies were focused on cold-formed steel and stainless steel.However,research on aluminium alloys is very sparse,especially on hollow section members with cross stiffeners.The objective of this paper is to investigate the performance of aluminium alloy sections subjected to concentrated force.Experimental tests and numerical modelling results on aluminium alloy square and rectangular hollow sections(SHS/RHS)subjected to concentrated force are presented.The main work is as follows: A series tests on aluminmium alloy square and rectangular hollow sections(SHS/RHS)with cross stiffeners subjected to web crippling was presented.A total of 26 web crippling tests under four loading conditions were collected.Different bearing lengths,web slenderness values(i.e.the width-to-thickness ratio h/t)and four different loading conditions have been considered.Non-linear finite element(FE)models were developed and validated against the test strengths,specimen failure modes and full load-deformation performance.Upon validation,the FE models were used to perform a parametric study in order to supplement the experimental work.Finally,the generated data from tests and FE models was used to assess the web bearing design equations in the existing design codes and the CSM method.