Studies On The Stability Of The Hexagonal Hole Castellated Members

Castellated members which are economic, beautiful and have good carrying capacity are widely used in engineering practice. However, the research of the castellated members is not enough and there is no provision on castellated member in Chinese norm of construction. So it is difficult to promote the member. This paper presents a study on the stability of the hexagonal hole castellated members.At first, the hexagonal hole castellated columns which have different boundary conditions carrying axis force are researched. When the critical load is deduced by the energy method, the bending theory of sandwich beams is used to consider the shear effect. Then the finite element software ANSYS is used to analyse different dimensions of the castellated columns. The results are compared with two kinds of theory solutions. It shows that the theory solution which consider the shear effect are more accurate to predict the buckling of the hexagonal hole castellated column.Then, the hexagonal hole castellated beams which have different boundary conditions carrying pure bending moment are researched. When the critical moment is deduced by the energy method, the influence on the shearing strain energy caused by the hexagonal holes is considered. The finite element software ANSYS is also used to validate the theory solution. It shows that the FEA results agree well with the theory solution. In addition, the finite element analysis also demonstrates the critical moment increase with the expansion ratio, but the gradient will become smaller when the beam length increases.