Effect of position of hexagonal opening in concrete encasedsteel castellated beams under flexural loading

Castellated beams fabricated from standard I-sections are being used for several structural applications such as commercial and industrial buildings, multistory buildings, warehouses and portal frames in view of numerous advantages. The advantages include enhanced moment of inertia, stiffness, flexural resistance, reduction in weight of structure, by passing the used plate girders, the passage of service through the web openings etc. In the present study, experimental and numerical investigations were carried out on concrete encased steel castellated beams with hexagonal openings under flexural loading. Various positions of openings such as along the neutral axis, above the neutral axis and below the neutral axis were considered for the study. From the experimental findings, it has been observed that the load-carrying capacity of the castellated beam with web opening above neutral axis is found to be higher compared to other configurations. Nonlinear finite element analysis was performed by using general purpose finite element software ABAQUS considering the material nonlinearities. Concrete damage plasticity model was employed to model the nonlinearity of concrete and elasto-plastic model for steel. It has been observed that FE model could able to capture the behaviour of concrete encased steel castellated beams and the predicted values are in good agreement with the corresponding experimental values.