Behaviour of steel members subjected to combined bending and torsion

• Main Author: Hong, Jianming.
• Other Authors: Chiew Sing Ping
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Civil engineering::Structures and design
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/15863
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The Sze Chuan earthquake in 2008 was a catastrophic disaster that brought the attention of engineers to the need for a temporary shelter that would be able to solve the housing problems of the people whose houses were destroyed in the disaster. In the design and the actual construction of a shelter, there are a lot of problems has to be solved to ensure the workability and quality of the shelter. It would be necessary for the shelter to be easily and rapidly deployed to solve the housing problem in the shortest amount of time. Therefore the materials used have to be easily transported and the building techniques have to be simple and basic for the local workers to be able to build the shelter without much guidance. This would make the whole building process more efficient and effective. It would be essential to design against the various failure modes in order to ensure stability. The shelter has to be able to withstand the loads that are going to be posed on them. The author has decided to narrow down the wide scope to the design of the floor beams in order to come up with a more meticulous and detailed report. In the design of the floor beams, it is inevitable that the need for torsional loadings in temporary earthquake shelters has to be addressed. Therefore the basic theories of torsion, bending, warping and the various failure loads required were researched on and included in the theoretical consideration. The calculations for the failure loads have been done and included in the codified analysis. In consistent with the BS 5950 design code, with guidance from the research paper ‘Design of Members Subject to Combined Bending and Torsion’, a simple method of combining the effects both bending and torsion had been implemented. At the experimental stage, the objectives of the experiment and project as a whole has been carefully considered and presented. With the cooperation of the Construction Technology Laboratory, the experimental investigation has been carried out and the results obtained were tabulated in a systematic format to allow easy comparison between the different beams and conditions. Evaluations have been done on the results obtained from the experimental investigation and a formal conclusion has been drawn. Recommendations for future research have also been included at the end of the report.