Experimental and numerical study on the shear behavior of web perforated cold-formed steel beams

In the practical application of cold-formed steel members, a certain number and forms of holes are often placed in the web of members. The web opening will weaken the shear capacity of a cold-formed steel member. In this paper, 26 groups of cold-formed C-section steel beams with web openings within the shear span were tested under mid-span single point loading. Then finite element analysis software ABAQUS was used to conduct extensive parameter analysis on low shear-span ratio (1.0 and 1.5) cold-formed thin-walled lipped C-section steel beams with different hole depth-to-web height ratios and web height-to-thickness ratios. Moreover, the mechanical behaviors including the stress distribution, the development process of failure, as well as the effect of coupled bending effect on the steel beams under primary shear force were deeply studied. The research results are of certain reference value for the revision of relevant codes and the practical application of this kind of members.