Finite Element Analysis of Cold-formed Steel Connections

This paper presents a study on the structural performance of column-base and beam-columnconnections of cold-formed steel with the use of single-lipped C-sections with bolted momentconnections. Experiments were done on two specimens; a column-base connection and a beamcolumnconnection and the results showed that section failure caused by flexural buckling wasalways critical. Managing to attain moment resistances which are close to the results ofconnected sections, it was proven that the proposed connections were structurally efficient. Finiteelement models were established with the use of shell elements to model the sections while barelements were used to model the bolted fastenings for the purpose of examining the structuralbehaviour of both the column-base and the beam-column connections. Incorporation of materialnon-linearity and comparison between the experimental and numerical results were presented.The proposed analysis method for predicting structural behaviour of column-base and beamcolumnconnections with similar connection configuration proved to be adequate.