The behavior of steel beams

H Metal distributes on demand metal products necessary for the manufacture of steel beams.

The beams are horizontal resistance elements, which take the vertical gravitational actions and transmit them to the vertical resistance elements.

The structural action of a beam is represented by internal forces called: bending moments and shear forces. The behavior of any beam is characterized by the magnitude and distribution of these forces. At any point of the beam, the internal shear force and the internal bending moment can be represented as pairs of forces.

The performance of any beam is dependent on the geometry of the cross section, not only on the physical dimensions, but also on the shape. Steel beams are available in a variety of cross-sectional shapes. These include open sections and closed sections or tubes. In practice, I profiles are most frequently used for beams in buildings. Rectangular pipes can be used for edge beams, if certain edge details are required.

Types of steel beams

Beams can be standard or specially manufactured sections. Both open and closed sections are produced in a wide variety of standard (series) sizes by a hot rolling process. Standard sections are used, in general, because they are easily accessible and economical.

Beams can be curved to reduce overall deformation or simply to create more interesting shapes. This is done through a specialized bending process. For small degrees of curvature, beam design calculations are no different from those of a straight beam. However, for significantly curved beams, the structural action becomes that of a spring.

The bending behavior is related to the moment of inertia and the section modulus of the beam. They depend on the size and shape of the cross section and are indicated in the standard tables for all laminated sections.

The bending strength can be limited by the strength of the material, lateral torsional buckling or local buckling.

The behavior of a beam is mainly affected by the span, loading, the way it is supported, the materials and the cross-section.

For the same span and load, three things affect the performance of a beam:

– the way the beam is supported

– the properties of the material

– the geometry of the cross section of the beam