Design of Axially-loaded Wide-flange Columns Subjected to Torsion Through One Flange

• Author / Creator

  Quintin, Riley

• It has become common for steel fabricators to find torsional loads included in the design documents of many industrial steel structures. These loads arise in wide-flange beam-to-column moment connections when the beam is subject to weak axis bending, which in turn, is transferred to the column as torsion applied to the adjoining flange. If the wide-flange column is unstiffened at the connection, localized distortion of the web can lead to additional rotation of the connected flange that are not accounted for in classical elastic torsion theory. Due to a lack of codified guidelines or relevant literature on how to design for this behaviour, designers routinely add full-depth web stiffeners at the connection to prevent localized distortion of the member, which is costly and time consuming. Previous research has revealed some information about how the torsional moment is shared between the column web in bending and flange in torsion, but no full-scale tests considered the presence of axial load. The current study performs parametric numerical analysis studies to consider the effects of cross sectional geometry and the deleterious effects of axial load on the strength and stiffness of the wide-flange column. Fifteen full-scale tests have been conducted to verify the findings from numerical simulations and develop a design procedure for predicting the strength and stiffness of the member. Formulations have been provided to calculate the behavior of unstiffened axially loaded wide-flange members subjected to torsion through one flange.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Steel
  • Axial Load
  • Column
  • Wide-Flange
  • Torsion

• Graduation date

  Spring 2018

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3513VB16

• License

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