NUMERICAL STUDY ON THE BEHAVIOR OF CFRP STRENGTHENED COLD-FORMED STEEL BEAMS CONSIDERING THE EFFECT OF COHESIVE MATERIAL

Abstract

The thesis presents an analytical investigation of the through plate moment connection in cold-formed steel beam for the cases with and without CFRP-strengthening. Cold-formed steel beams are typically strengthened with CFRP plates to enhance their structural behavior and to increase their strength capacity. Three-dimensional non-linear finite element analysis have been performed for cold-formed steel beam-to-column through plate moment connections under monotonic loading. First, verification model is developed. Afterword’s, a parametric study is performed which includes variation in the profiles slenderness, different configurations and lengths of CFRP plates, and the number of layers of the CFRP Plate. The purpose of this parametric study was to show the relation between the normalized moment (M/MP) against the rotation angle(Ɵ) for the cold-formed steel sections for cases with and without strengthening considering the effect of cohesive material.