Flexural performance of cold-formed square CFST beams strengthened with internal stiffeners

The tube outward local buckling of Concrete-Filled Steel Tube (CFST) beam under high compression stress is still considered a critical problem, especially for steel tubes with a slender section compared to semi-compact and compact sections. In this study, the flexural performance of stiffened slender cold-formed square tube beams filled with normal concrete was investigated. Fourteen (14) simply supported CFST specimens were tested under static bending loads, stiffened with different shapes and numbers of steel stiffeners that were provided at the inner sides of the tubes. Additional finite element (FE) CFST models were developed to further investigate the influence of using internal stiffeners with varied thickness. The results of tests and FE analyses indicated that the onset of local buckling, that occurs at the top half of the stiffened CFST beam cross-section at mid-span was substantially restricted to a smaller region. Generally, it was also observed that, due to increased steel area provided by the stiffeners, the bending capacity, flexural stiffness and energy absorption index of the stiffened beams were significantly improved. The average bending capacity and the initial flexural stiffness of the stiffened specimens for the various shapes, single stiffener situations have increased of about 25% and 39%, respectively. These improvements went up to 45% and 60%, for the double stiffeners situations. Moreover, the bending capacity and the flexural stiffness values obtained from the experimental tests and FE analyses validated well with the values computed from equations of the existing standards.