Performance of composite steel-concrete beam with stiffener next to web opening

Openings are provided in Composite steel-concrete beams (CB) for the allowance of ducts and pipes, which generally reduces the beam’s flexural performance. So, to retain the strength of these beams, stiffeners are introduced adjacent to the web openings. Hence, a numerical study is performed to evaluate the influence of the stiffeners next to web openings through finite element analysis (FEA) software ABAQUS v6.14. Three different shapes of openings with three different placements of stiffeners are considered for the study, namely circular, rectangular, and triangular openings with stiffeners along longitudinal, transverse, and diagonal directions. As revealed from the findings of FEA, comparisons are made based on the ultimate load, stiffness, and stress distribution. From comparisons, it is found that double-sided longitudinal and transverse stiffeners next to the circle opening are comparable to conventional CB. Similarly, Diagonal stiffeners increase strength in rectangular and triangle openings. Transverse stiffeners failed to increase load capacity and decrease stress concentration compared to other longitudinal and diagonal stiffeners. Further validation for the finite element results is done using the Levenberg–Marquardt (LM) algorithm, using the backpropagation variant technique of Artificial Neural Network (ANN). The results of ANN, i.e., Mean Square Error (MSE) and Multiple Determination Coefficient (R2), are above 0.9 and below 1, respectively. Thus, the results of ANN indicate that the provided results are perfectly fit for predicting with the ANN technique.