LAUSR

Abstract Steel profiled sheeting decks are extensively used in buildings, ships, and bridges due to their numerous advantages in comparison with normal reinforced concrete slabs. Nevertheless, ordinary types of these composite decks with profiled steel sheets contain a significant percentage of concrete in the tension zone with the minimum performance inducing unwanted weight, dead load, and earthquake load to the whole structure. Therefore, in the first phase, this paper extends the initial designs proposed in previous research, with the aim of enhancing the efficiency of steel profiled sheeting decks, by means of employing polyvinyl chloride (PVC) tubes and polyurethane (PU) parts to replace the concrete in tension. A series of parametric studies are conducted for new composite sections proposed to analyze the effects of material properties and geometrical configurations. In the second phase, the probability of local buckling of the new proposed thin-walled sections is controlled, four methods are presented for solving the stability problem, and parametric analysis is conducted for these methods based on available analytical buckling formulations together with the finite element models output data. The finite element model employed here considers the contact interactions between all constituents and nonlinearities. The studies demonstrate that with an appropriate specifying of material type and dimensions, new proposed sections would enhance the performance of the deck even with lower weights.