Rafter stiffeners – needed or not?

Zealous application of the rules in EN 1993-1-8 has resulted in stiffeners being provided in rafters at the “sharp end” of portal frame haunches – where the haunch flange meets the rafter. David Brown and Bogdan Balan of the SCI report on the investigation to demonstrate that in the particular arrangement of portal frame haunches, the rules in BS 5950 are a more appropriate assessment of the need (or not) to add reinforcement.

In order to retain the accurate formatting of the equations in this technical paper, this article is available as a pdf download only.

Click here to download and view it.