The Effectiveness for Installations and Strengths of the Applications of Cold-formed Steel SupaCee Sections

Cold-formed steel structures have been progressively used in structural buildings with the application of typical channel sections. The cold-formed channel sections in the form of thin-walled sections are prone to be instable due to the small thickness and large web, this leads to the occurrence of the buckling phenomenon at the early stage wasting the material expenditure. Therefore, stiffeners have been added to the web of this section to increase the sectional stability to form a new section termed SupaCee. The paper will investigate the capacities of cold-formed steel channel and SupaCee members under compression or bending by using the Direct Strength Method regulated in the Australian Standard AS/NZS 4600-2018. The obtained results are the basis to evaluate the strength improvements of SupaCee members in comparison with those of traditional channel members. The installation effectiveness of the innovative SupaCee sections is also analysed on the basis of technical reports from the manufacturers.