Proc. Instn. Civ. Engrs, Part 1, 1991, 90, June, 521~536 PAPER 9573 STRUCTURAL AND BUILDING BOARD Castellated beams P. R. KNOWLES, MA, MPhil, MICE, FIHT* ‘The process of castellation was patented in 1939. Applied mainly to rolled sections for use as. beams, it has been for many years a significant feature in steel construction. The Paper describes the steps leading up io the invention and the early attempts to devise methods of calculating the load carrying capacity and deflexion of castellated beams. Both elastic and plastic methods of analysis are examined, the basis and use of interactive design charts is explained, and the requirements of BS 5950 are outlined. Notation Aye notional web area for shear deflexion calculation, A, area oftee B beam flange width De depth of castellated section Dg _ setial depth of original section G shear modulus notional second moment of area for deflexion calculation, second moment of area through an opening Ky" constant related to tec K, constant related to tee M bending moment on tee M, maximum permitted bending moment M, plastic moment of tee M’, positive bending moment on tee negative bending moment on tee axial force on tee squash load of tee shear force on tee maximum permitted shear shear failure load of tee shear force on upper tee shear force on lower tee elastic section modulus of beam at opening length of horizontal cut forming castellation castellation dimension castellation dimension depth of web between fillets sum of stresses f,,and fy stress in tee from bending moment on beam PURO CONST SZZE Written discussion closes 15 August 1991; for further details see p. “Principal, Peter Knowles and Associates 521KNOWLES Jy stress in tee from shear force on beam hh distance between centroids of tees P spacing of openings p, material design strength t” web thickness angle of sloping side of castellation to horizontal Castellated beams Innovations in civil and structural engineering are not common; the invention of the castellated beam was the result of a rare flash of inspiration which occurred to a designer faced with an apparently insoluble problem. 2. Fifty years ago, on 4 January 1939, British Patent number 498 281 was granted to Geoffrey Murray Boyd, at that time living at 11 Burwood Avenue, Hayes, Kent, for a specification related to improvements in built-up structural members ‘of the kind comprising two parts with pairs of projections extending towards one another and welded along a line of sinuous or toothed nature’. The rather involved phraseology of the specification refers, in fact, to what is now known as a castellated steel section, although at the time of the patent application it was called the Boyd beam,’ 3. The basis of the beam’s method of construction, described by a writer in The Shipbuilder* as ‘both simple and ingenious’, had occurred to Boyd in 1935 when he was working in Buenos Aires, Argentina, as a structural engineer for the British Structural Steel Company, the South American subsidiary of Dorman Long. He was faced with the problem of designing a beam for a monorail hoist. The maximum beam flange width was, of necessity, restricted by the width of the hoist opening, but the choice of rolled beams in stock was such that the only ones available within the restricted flange width were insufficiently stiff for the required span, Boyd was musing on the possibility of strengthening a beam by welding another below it—a rather crude solution—when he thought of cutting and welding the beam web in such a way as to increase its depth and, consequently, its stiffness. An experiment with a cardboard model quickly showed the feasibility of the idea, and thus the Boyd beam was invented. Much development work was, understandably, still required. 4. The patent specification is concerned not only with a simple castellation of rolled beams but also with techniques of tapering, of forming Z-shaped sections from channels and of forming cruciform and star-shaped sections for use as columns. Applications are claimed for ships, aircraft and vehicles as well as for buildings. In the specification, the use of flame cutting and welding is stressed. Various geometries of castellation opening are discussed, based on the angle of the sloping sides and the length of the horizontal portion. It was, however, the Boyd beam type C which went into general use and whose geometry has become the standard for castellated beams in the United Kingdom (Fig. \). The depth of cut ¢ is half the serial depth Dg of the original section. Therefore, the depth of the castellated beam Dc = D + 0:5D, = 15D, where D is the actual depth of the original section. 5. For various reasons, one of which was the 1939-1945 World War and another Boyd's position as a Civil Servant, he was unable to exploit his invention commercially. Boyd therefore assigned his patent rights to the Appleby Froding- ham branch of the United Steel Companies Limited, which marketed steelwork 522CASTELLATED BEAMS Pp biebya Web post @ Fig. 1. (a) Universal beam cut along web; (b) two halves welded together to form castellated beam fabricated in accordance with the Boyd principles as Appleby Frodingham Castel- lated Construction. Regrettably, the inventor’s name was superseded by a more cumbersome but nevertheless descriptive word meaning ‘castle-like or battle- mented’, a cleat reference to the toothed appearance of the flame-cut section before welding. The extended patent expired many years ago, allowing castellated sec- tions to be produced freely by any steelwork fabricator. The fact remains, however, that, with the exception of the Litska beam in which the depth of the original section is further increased by a plate welded between the castellated teeth (Fig. 2), no significant improvement has been made to Boyd's original concept. \ Fig. 2. Extended (Litska) castellated beam 523KNOWLES Design considerations 6. Designers have long laboured under the difficulty of not having a generally accepted design method for castellated beams. The inventor did produce safe load charts (Fig, 3), which were based on what was then considered the prudent ‘Shear: Max. reaction = 1/1:5° of max. safe reaction ‘on original beam at 5 tin? on web Bending: Max. extreme fibre siress 6 1/in? Daffexion: Not exceeding 1/325, E ~ 12000 t/in® Lateral support assumed adequate ‘Total sate uniformly distributed load: tons 10 a a Span: 10 x 44% BB 15 x 4% @ 25 Ibs Means: Boyd Beam 15 x 4¥/ (« 25 Ibs made from BSB 10 x 4% «a 25 los Copyright by G. M. Boys. Fig. 3. Safe load chart for Boyd beam 524 BOYD BEAMS: with uniformly distributed loads - ‘Type ‘c’ openings, 60 70 80 90100CASTELLATED BEAMS [Shearing deformation Fig.4. Panel deformation in shear assumption that the beam properties to be used in calculation should be those minimum values obtained for the portions above and below the opening in the web; in effect, two tee sections. Subsequent testing has shown that this apparently safe procedure is not correct; stresses and, in particular, deffexions can be seriously underestimated. The reason lies in the flexibility of the region at each opening, which, deforming in shear (Fig. 4), produces stresses and deflexions which augment those produced by simple beam action. Elastic stress distribution 7. Elastic analysis of a beam with openings in the web has been carried out by a number of methods which include finite difference? and finite element* tech- niques. However, a simple analogy in which the castellated beam is considered to be a Vierendee! girder with points of contraflexure at the mid-line of the openings and at mid-height of the web posts (Fig. 5), and with the shear force at the centre-line of the opening divided equally between top and bottom tees, is an attractive substitute structure which is statically determinate. The stress at the tee-to-post junction can then be calculated. 8. Experimental verification of the validity of the Vierendeel analysis has been reported from many sources. A detailed summary is given in Kerdal and Nether- cot, but it must be pointed out that many of these tests have the weakness that they have been carried out on sections whose castellation profiles are significantly different from those of current UK standard type. Early tests in the UK were on British Standard beams, which became obsolete many years ago, and most of the tests were on beams of small size. It may be concluded that further tests on castellated universal beams of intermediate or larger size could usefully be carried out. 9. Ateach hole, bending and shear are transmitted by the top and bottom tees On the assumptions of Vierendeel action, the longitudinal stress at the junction of tee and post (A-A in Fig. 6) consists of two components: the component due to bending /; the component due to shear f,. The total longitudinal stress f= f,, +4,. If the tee properties are area Ay and elastic section modulus Z;., then for applied bending moment M and shear force V Jn = M/Aph = K,M fu = V)2Z, = KV 525KNOWLES where K,= Ash K, = a/2Zy In calculations, the smaller of the two values of Z, is used. The section constants K, and K, have been tabulated.° 10. On examination, K, will be seen to be approximately equal to the recipro- cal of the castellated beam elastic modulus Z at an opening T= 2Apxth/2)"] = Ay h?2 (neglecting the small value of J for each tee about its own centroidal axis). @ ) © Fig. 5. Vierendeel analogy: (a) castellated beam; (b) equivalent Vierendeel girder; (0 location of points of contraflexure 526CASTELLATED BEAMS. Al ve Min v2 ae | b \ I abst (a) (o) (coh Fig. 6. Stresses at junction of tee and post (A-A): (a) direct stress due to bending fu ; (b) bending stress due to shear fy (c) combined stress f Therefore, the Vierendeel analysis gives a flange stress larger than that found by using the minimum elastic section modulus. 11. If maximum elastic stress be the design criterion then it will be necessary, design, to check the sum of stresses at each cross-section A~A (Fig. 6) along the Jength of the castellated beam, unless the point of maximum stress is immediately apparent. Properties K, and K, are not known until a beam has been selected; direct design is not possible, and a trial and error process is needed, Some assist- ance can be gained from published material: load tables have been calculated for uniformly distributed and central point loads on a range of spans for all the universal beams.° For certain load cases, use can be made of the results in figure 6 of reference 6. 12. For other load cases, interaction curves are available which are based on the linear interaction between shear force and bending. In the absence of bending moment, the shear force which can be carried by the beam, in terms of the bending stress generated by the shear force, is limited by the material strength p,. The maximum shear force V is then given by Vo = p,/K2 Similarly, in the absence of shear force, the maximum bending moment Mo = Py/Ky 13._ For any general combination of bending moment M and shear force V, the resulting sum of bending stresses must not exceed the material design strength p, K\M+K.,V 63(275/f,)" (BS 5950, clause 3.6.2) and therefore will have to be checked for shear buckling. The Classification of the tee chord downstand is not clear: should it be treated as a tee stalk or as part of a web? On the former assumption, calculation of the slenderness (A/1) ratio of the stalk shows that only a few sections are compact (see Table 1); the remainder are semi-compact. 30. From these considerations it is clear that true plastic design of castellated beams is possible only for a very small number of sections; the remainder must be designed on an elastic basis, as semi-compact sections, using the net section properties with due allowance for secondary Vierendeel effects of shear at the openings and for the local effects of point loads, if any, at any point in the beam (clause 4.15.3.2). Conclusion 31. Fifty years after their invention, castellated beams continue to meet a need for an efficient element to provide for moderately loaded longer spans, as they have useful apertures for the passage of services and an attractive appearance. The design of the beams for simply supported structures by elastic methods is well- documented. Some restriction on their use in continuous structures is inevitable 535KNOWLES given the problems of slenderness which lead to restricted rotation capacity. Experimental work to determine the limits of their use is to be encouraged. References 1, PATENT SPECIFICATION. Improvements in built-up structural members. HMSO, 1939, Jan. 4, Patent Specification 498, 281 2. Anew method of girder construction. Shipbldr Mar. Eng. Bldr, 1949, Oct., 682-683. 3. Manpet J. A. et al, Stress distribution in castellated beams. J. Struct. Div. Am. Soc. Cie. Engrs, 1971, 91(7), 1947-1967. 4, Srimant S. L. and Das. Finite element analysis of castellated beams. Computers Structs, 1978, 9, Aug,, 169-174, 5. Kerbat D. and NetHERcoT D. A. Failure modes for castellated beams. J. Constr. Steel Res, 1984, 4, 259-315, 6. Knowtes P. R. Design of castellated beams. CONSTRADO, Croydon, 1985 (for use with BS 5950 and BS 449). 7. UNrreD STEEL COMPANIES. Properties and strengths of castella beams. Deflection charac- teristics. United Steel Companies, Rotherham, 1960, Aug., Report D.TS.6/262/2 8. Unrrep Srett. Compantes. Properties and strengths of castella beams. Further tests. Research and Development Department, Swinden Laboratories, 1958, July, Report D.GE. 71/262/1. 9. Hosa M. U. and Sprers W. G. Failure of castelated [sic] beams due to rupture of welded joints. Acier, Stahl, Steel, 1971, 36 (1), an. 34-40. 10. AGLAN A. A. and Repwoo R. G. Web buckling in castellated beams. Proc. Instn Cie. Engrs, Part 2, 1974, $7, June, 307-320. 11. Oxuso T. and NetHERcoT D. A. Web post strength in castellated beams. Proc. Instn Civ. Engrs, Part 2, 1985, 79, Sept., 533-557 12. HaLLEUX P. Limit analysis of castellated beams. Acier, Stahl, Steel, 1967, 32, Mar., 133-144, 13. SueRsouRNE A. N. and Oostxom J. van. Plastic analysis of castellated beams, 1. Inter- action of moment, shear and axial force. Computers Structs, 1972, 2, 79-109. 14, BRITisH STANDARDS INSTITUTION. Structural use of steelwork in building. Part 1: Code of practice for design in simple and continuous construction: hot rolled sections. BSI, London, 1985, BS 5950, 536