M. Georgescu, V. Ungureanu, A. Gruin
Abstract Liner trays are large channel-type thin-walled steel sections with two narrow flanges, two webs and one wide flange, very frequently used in practice both to resist perpendicular uniformly distributed loading from wind and create a diaphragm effect at the level of industrial buildings cladding. Such cladding systems are normally built using a required number of horizontally laid inter-connected adjacent liner trays plus an external skin of sinusoidal or trapezoidal sheeting installed perpendicularly to their direction (with vertical corrugations). This results in a stiff metal cellular system (as outer wall of the building) having its inner space filled with thermic insulating material. When trying to evaluate the resistance of such elements by experiment, upper specific constructional details play a major role and create quite complex problems in establishing a correct experimental set-up. Thus, an experimental set-up made of three joined liner trays is proposed with adequate detailing to match the real situation of such claddings. Aspects related to the experimental set-up, test results (in terms of found collapse modes) experimentally and numerically determined resistances are emphasized. A comparison with FE simulation is presented and discussed in the final part.