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With the vast advancement of structural steel properties over the recent decades, structural steel has become the dominate material for the construction of bridges, stadiums, factories and high rise buildings. This paper aims to present the study of structural behaviour and efficiency of tapered steel section with elliptical perforation under shear loading conditions.

The effect of various elliptical perforation configurations such as tapering ratio, perforation size, perforation orientation and perforation layout on the shear behaviour of tapered steel section has been investigated by using finite element method. A total of 112 models are simulated via LUSAS software.

It has been found that the most efficient model is the tapered steel section with tapering ratio of 0.3 and vertical elliptical perforation of 0.2 times the section depths which are arranged in Layout 3. The most efficient model has a shear efficiency of 1,094.35 kN, which is 4.12% less than the tapered steel section without perforation, but it could achieve a 0.32% of weight reduction.

The smaller tapering ratio and perforation size contributed to the higher shear buckling capacity and efficiency for the elliptical perforated tapered steel section.

Due to economic development, tapered members are commonly applied in steel frames, namely, industrial halls, warehouses, exhibition centres, etc. In the design of cantilever steel beam structures in cities building design, tapering is introduced at the web profile to achieve utmost economy and suit the bending moment distributions. The cross-sectional shape of the beam is varied linearly to the moment gradient to achieve the target of higher efficiency with lower cost.

The shear deformation pattern and efficiency of the tapered steel section with perforation were investigated using finite element analysis. In addition, I-beam with web opening is studied numerically via LUSAS software for different parameters of tapering ratio, perforation shape and perforation size and perforation layout.

The highest contributing parameters for the highest shear buckling capacity and efficiency of the section were due to the small opening size and tapering ratio. Whilst the variation of perforation layout and spacing give a major effect on the shear strength and efficiency of the tapered steel section with perforation. Besides that, the highest efficiency model is found when the section is designed with 0.4 D diamond perforation in Layout 3 under a tapering ratio of 0.3. The critical shear buckling load and efficiency is reduced 14.39% and 13.91%, respectively, when perforations are added onto the tapered steel sections.

The tapered steel section with perforation has lower critical shear buckling load and efficiency compared to the tapered section without perforation but obtains a higher critical shear buckling load and efficiency compared to the uniform section without perforation.