Numerical evaluation of shear performance in cold-formed stainless steel supacee section with web openings

Abstract

Cold-formed stainless-steel (CFSS) members offer corrosion resistance and lightweight structural efficiency, making them suitable for a range of structural applications. Web openings are commonly introduced into CFSS SupaCee sections to accommodate building services and minimise storey height; however, they reduce the effective web area and consequently the shear capacity. Research on the shear strength reduction caused by circular web openings in CFSS SupaCee sections remains limited. This study presents a numerical investigation of the shear behaviour and capacity of cold-formed duplex stainless-steel (grade 1.4462) SupaCee sections containing unreinforced circular web openings. A parametric study comprising 120 finite element models was undertaken following validation against existing experimental shear test data to investigate the effect of circular web openings on shear capacity. The numerical results were used to develop a third-order polynomial equation for predicting the shear reduction factor. The proposed equation showed close agreement with the finite element results, with a mean FE-to-predicted ratio of 1.0010 and a coefficient of variation of 0.0640.