Tests of aluminum alloy perforated built-up sections subjected to bending

This paper presents the experimental investigation of aluminum alloy built-up flexural members with web perforations. The capacity of web would reduce due to losing of material. With the aim of identifying the influence of web holes on the flexural behavior and strength of aluminum alloy built-up sections, a total of 28 aluminum alloy built-up beams with different lengths and hole diameters were tested under both three-point and four-point bending. The failure modes include local buckling, shear buckling, and combined distortional and local buckling, which depends on the cross-sectional slenderness, the hole size, the location of holes and other factors. The design formulae of the current Direct Strength Method (DSM) for the flexural strength and shear strength of cold-formed steel beams were used for predicting the strengths of the aluminum alloy built-up beams tested in this study. The predicted strengths were also compared with the experimental strengths. It was found that the current DSM can be used to predict the flexural and shear strengths of aluminum alloy perforated built-up beams, and the predicted results are generally conservative.