Evaluation of stresses and deflections in expanded metal plates subjected to transverse loading

The implementation of rigid and lightweight structures that perform support functions has their main field of application in the industrial sector. These structures must satisfy all requirements of security and comfort, besides being profitable for the company using them, at the time of procurement and maintenance. This paper aims at studying the behavior of expanded metal meshes subject to transverse loading, determining the deflections produced by this type of loading. In this study, design recommendations for the use and installation of expanded metal meshes provided by Standard EMMA 557-15 are considered. Therefore, a finite element model is developed considering linear behavior of material and geometry, employing the commercial software ANSYS. Solid elements are used in the generation of the computational model where metal sheets are subject to transverse loads to determine the deflections in the mesh. Next, the influence of the following parameters is evaluated: material properties, span between structural supports, magnitude and type of the transverse load (concentrated or uniform), size of pattern, and orientation of the mesh. Finally, numerical results show that deflections found in expanded metal meshes are clearly affected by the aforementioned parameters