Web bearing design of aluminium alloy hollow sections

Web failure is one of the common local failure modes, which occurs at points under transverse concentrated loading of thin-walled sections without stiffeners. It can be furthermore subdivided into two different failure modes: web crippling for slender webs and web bearing for stocky webs. The aim of this study is to investigate the web bearing design rules of relatively stocky sections. Experimental and numerical programmes on aluminium alloy Square and Rectangular Hollow Sections (SHS/RHS) subjected to web bearing are presented herein. The tests were conducted under two loading conditions, i.e. End-Two-Flange (ETF) and Interior-Two-Flange (ITF). Two different bearing lengths of 50 mm and 90 mm were investigated. The test specimens were fabricated by extrusion of normal and high strength aluminium alloys, and the web slenderness ranges from 2.8 to 28.0. In addition to the experimental work, non-linear Finite Element (FE) models were developed and validated against the test strengths and failure mode. Upon validation, the FE models were used to perform parametric studies. In both loading conditions, all of the specimens were failed by material yielding at the webs. The newly generated data pool including 22 experimental and 42 numerical results is used to revisit the web bearing design equations in the existing international codes. Furthermore, new design rules for ETF and ITF loading conditions are proposed with the consideration of strain hardening of aluminium alloys. In addition, the experimental and numerical results were compared with the web bearing strengths predicted by the newly proposed design rules. It is shown that the newly proposed design equations are not only accurate but also consistent.