Cold-formed high strength steel members are increasingly used as primary load bearing components in low rise buildings. Lipped channel beam (LCB) is one of the most commonly used flexural members in these applications. In this research an experimental study was undertaken to investigate the shear behaviour and strengths of LCB sections. Simply supported test specimens of back to back LCBs with aspect ratios of 1.0 and 1.5 were loaded at mid-span until failure. Test specimens were chosen such that all three types of shear failure (shear yielding, inelastic and elastic shear buckling) occurred in the tests. The ultimate shear capacity results obtained from the tests were compared with the predictions from the current design rules in Australian/NewZealand and American cold-formed steel design standards. This comparison showed that these shear design rules are very conservative as they did not include the post-buckling strength observed in the shear tests and the higher shear buckling coefficient due to the additional fixity along the web-flange juncture. Improved shear design equations are proposed in this paper by including the above beneficial effects. Suitable lower bound design rules were also developed under the direct strength method format. This paper presents the details of this experimental study and the results including the improved design rules for the shear capacity of LCBs. It also includes the details of tests of LCBs subject to combined shear and flange distortion, and combined bending and shear actions, and proposes suitable design rules to predict the capacities in these cases.
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