Experimental and Analytical Investigation of Castellated Steel Beams with Varying Openings Eccentricity

There is a common practice of providing openings in the hot-rolled steel section. The openings are provided normally along the neutral axis of the beam. Such beams are called castellated, cellular or perforated beams depending upon the shape of the openings provided. Sometimes due to some unavoidable situation, it is not possible to provide the concentric openings. In such circumstances, an alternative is to provide eccentric openings. Therefore in this paper, the study of castellated has been carried out by varying eccentricity. The study has been split into two parts. In the first of the investigation, an experimental study has been executed to evaluate the realistic behaviour of perforated beams, and in the second part of the investigation, a parametric study has been carried out by varying openings eccentricity. The range of eccentricity is taken as 0, 25 mm and 50 mm in both tension and compression zones. From the experimental study, it has been observed that failure modes are found to be are web post-buckling and Vierendeel mechanism. From the analytical study, it is observed that even eccentric openings are also performing similar to the concentric openings. The eccentricity of perforations provided should not be more than 20% depth of the beam section. Percentage decrease in strength for +ve eccentricity is 16%, whereas for −ve eccentricity, it is 9.30%. The use of reinforcement around the eccentric openings is recommended.