Abstract

Permanent urban growth of the world of today world implies demanding challenges for the steel construction industry. Nowadays, one of the most important issues is the cost optimization of steel structures. Since the weight of building materials is a major component of the total cost, engineers and designers try to reduce structural weight, without compromising durability and sustainability of a steel structure. Therefore, light gauge steel structures are considered the key to the future of simplified and low-cost construction. Cold-formed steel sections extensively encounter the modern steel construction industry. Not only are they used as secondary elements like purlins or sheeting, but also they can serve as primary load-bearing members in fabricated steel panels and trusses. Over the last few years, only typical forms of cold-formed steel sections (e.g. lipped C-sections and lipped Z-sections) have been extensively studied and the obtained results have been presented in many publications. A new and innovative form of cold-formed steel section was proposed recently. This trapezoidal thin-walled section, which is referred to as the GEB-section, has been already patented in the Polish Patent Office. Due to its relatively high strength-to-weight ratio it can be successfully used for primary load-bearing members in steel structures. Unfortunately, most of the rules given in EN 1993-1-3 cover the design of typical forms of cold-formed steel sections whose deformation modes are well known. The paper reports the results of the experimental investigation on deformation behavior of the GEB-section under pure bending and axial compression. The experimental study was carried out in order to determine the local and distortional buckling modes of the analyzed cold-formed steel section.

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