Novel Industrial application - Modified I-beam

I-beam, also known as Universal Beam (UB), is a I-shaped beam that commonly used in the construction industry as support element. It is consists of a horizontal flange ("I" shape) and a vertical "web" element. The flange is design to resist bending momentum while the web is designed to resist shear forces. I-beam is commonly made of mild steel that behave follow the Beam theory. The I-beam design is evaluated in terms of its stiffness, yield stress, bending failure, and shear failure. The design of I-beam is governed by the ASTM standards (For example: ASTM A9992).   

In Figure 1, a computational simulation was carried out to evaluate the performance of commercial I-beam and modified I-beam. The two major evaluation criteria for the I-beam are governed by Von Mises Stress and displacement rate. Von Mises Stress determine the mechanical failure of a material by checking the yield stress of the material. The mechanical design is said to fail if the maximum Von Mises Stress induced on the material is higher than the yield strength of the material. The concept of Von Mises Stress is governed by distortion energy failure theory while failure occur when distortion energy in actual case is greater than distortion energy in simple tension case. In the simulation, the selected material is alloy steel with a Yong's Modulus of 2.1E11 N/m2 and Yield Strength of 6.2E8 N/m2. Refer to (a) and (b) from Figure 1, the maximum value of Von Mises Stress is fixed at the end of the center plate with a value of 2.2E8 N/m2 and 6.2E8 N/m2 for commercial and modified I-beam , respectively. Both design have maximum Von Mises Stress value lower than the yield point value of alloy steel, thus the design is consider safe. The simulation result is in agree with other literature which showed that rigid material has higher loading resistance than complex (rigid-flexible-rigid) material. From (c) and (d) from Figure 1, the maximum displacement rate for commercial and modified I-beam are 4.92E3 mm and 1.07E2 mm, respectively. The results showed that modified-I beam has greater flexibility which is able tolerate longer cyclic loading. 

Steel beam is widely used for bridges and industrial buildings. In the design of bridge, the shear studs are increase with a steadily rising number of high-cycle loading which lead to fatigue failure during the lifetime of the structure. By adapting the complex structure from turtle shell, it can increase the lifetime of steel beam which is able to improve its loading resistance and fatigue resistance from the steel beam structure.           

(a)

                                                                                (b)

(c)

(d)

Figure 1. The mechanical performance of normal and modified-I beam based on SimulationExpress. (a) and (b) showed the Von Mises Stress from commercial and modified I-beam, (c) and (d) showed the displacement rate from commercial and modified I-beam

References
1. "What is Von Mises Stress", Learnengineering.org, 2016. [Online]. Available: http://www.learnengineering.org/2012/12/what-is-von-mises-stress.html. [Accessed: 04- Jul- 2016].