Literature Survey on the Flexural Behaviour of Cold Formed Steel Beam Sections

Cold-formed steel structures are steel structural products that are made by bending flat sheets of steel at ambient temperature into shapes which will support more than the flat sheets themselves. Cold formed steel members are extensively used in the building construction industry, especially in residential, commercial and industrial buildings. Cold formed steel sections such as channel sections, angle sections are often used nowadays. Built-up I-sections have been extensively used whenever standard I-sections could not satisfy the moment carrying and shear capacities required. Built-up cold formed sections are expected to improve their flexural capacity and to increase their applications. They are also likely to mitigate the detrimental effects of lateral distortional buckling observed with single cold formed steel members of intermediate spans. Various experiments have been carried out to study the flexural behaviour of cold formed steel sections. However, the behaviour of built-up beams is not well understood. This paper aims to present a summary of the various experiments and analyses carried to study the flexural behaviour of cold formed steel sections.