Investigations on the lateral-torsional buckling of an innovative U-shaped steel beam

An innovative solution of a steel-concrete composite beam was developed for buildings with beam spans between 6 and 12 m, taking into consideration the fire situation and the construction stage. The beam is composed of an U-shaped steel part, connected to a reinforced concrete part. In the construction phase, the beam is supporting the slab and constitutes a formwork for the reinforced concrete part. When casting concrete, the steel beam is filled at the same time as the slab, this allows considerable time savings on site. In the exploitation stage, the beam behaves as a steel-concrete composite beam. The developed U-shaped section is composed of three steel parts; a hot rolled steel plate (180x8x6300 mm, and two cold-formed steel plates (470x4x6300 mm) before folding. The section was assembled together with four self-drilling screws longitudinally spaced of 150 mm. In the construction stage, the U-shaped steel beam without restraints is prone to lateral torsional buckling instability. In this paper, the mechanical behaviour of the steel beam at the construction stage, in particular its lateral-torsional buckling stability, was studied. In order to characterize this instability without lateral support, a four-point bending test was carried out on a life-size specimen. The load introduction system was developed especially for the test to allow for all displacements due to LTB. The test clearly showed the lateral torsional buckling behaviour of the steel beam. The test results are compared with numerical simulations and analytical studies. A parametrical study, covering 200 geometrical configurations of the U-shaped beam, is carried out to validate the use of the curve "b" for the design of the steel beam for lateral torsional buckling according to Eurocodes 3.