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Cellular beams are beams with circular web perforations. They are usually made of steel and more specifically from hot rolled steel profiles. The main advantage of these beams over solid ones is that they allow the passing of HVAC equipment thus resulting in a significant reduction of the floor height. The current paper investigates the effect of three parameters on the structural behaviour of steel cellular beams and the shear capacity of the web-post that it is a key indicator of their overall performance. These parameters are the diameter of the web perforation, the thickness of the flanges and the thickness of the web. During the investigation, several three-dimensional numerical models have been constructed using ANSYS Workbench software package and a total of 12 case studies have been examined. The reference numerical model consists of a universal steel beam section UB457x152x52 with top and bottom flange thicknesses equal to 10.9mm, web thickness equal to 7.6mm and a web-opening diameter equal to 315mm and it has been validated against experimental results from the international literature. The analysis results indicate that the combination of top and bottom flange thicknesses equal to 10.9mm, of web thickness equal to 11.4mm and of web-opening diameter equal to 315mm has been found as the best option to improve the structural performance of the reference model. In this case, the shear capacity of the web-post has increased by 45.5% in respect to the initial value.
| Keywords | Cellular beams, numerical investigation, parametric analysis |
|---|---|
| Topics | Structural enginnering |
