07.27: Experimental and theoretical investigation on the local collapse of liner trays

Liner trays are thin‐walled cold‐formed steel sections of large channel‐type with two narrow flanges, two webs and one wide flange, very frequently used in practice both to resist perpendicular uniformly distributed loading from the wind and create a diaphragm effect at the level of industrial building cladding. When trying to evaluate the resistance of such elements by experiment, the specific constructional details play a major role and create quite complex problems in establishing a correct experimental setup, as close to reality as possible. Testing one single liner tray thus imposes correct simulation of real boundary conditions both on liner support and at mid‐span. Global collapse modes are not possible in such liner trays assembly while local modes are expected and impose the final value of experimentally measured resistance to perpendicular load. The correct introduction of real boundary conditions into the experimental setup will thus facilitate a measured value reasonably close to the one determined to code provisions. The paper describes the experimental and numerical investigations on liner trays. Aspects related to the experimental test setup and test results are emphasised.