This thesis introduces a newly developed construction solution for the cladding of roofs and facades of industrial steel-framed buildings, a so-called honeycomb girder system consisting of a mirror-symmetric arrangement of trapezoidal corrugated steel sheets connected with mechanical fasteners. It allows an increase of steel frame distances from 6 to 9 m up to 14 m. The present study investigates experimentally and numerically the load-carrying behaviour of simple beams of honeycomb girder systems under bending. Based on numerical parametric studies the maximum characteristic surface load of honeycomb girder systems with varying practically relevant geometric boundary conditions was determined. Within the investigated parameter variations, the mechanical fasteners were identified as the dominant component in the design of honeycomb girder systems. Furthermore, a constant development of the bending stiffness was observed up to reaching the maximum surface load. Experimental investigations of different honeycomb girder systems examined the load-carrying behaviour under bending and the subsequent verification of numerical models. By varying the fastener type and arrangement the influence of these structural parameters on the load-bearing capacity of honeycomb girder systems was quantified. In addition the load-carrying behaviour of different connections under shear was investigated experimentally in order to determine their characteristic shear forces and the spring characteristic curves, which serve as initial input data for the numerical simulation of honeycomb girder systems. Numerical preinvestigations determined adequate input parameters for the following numerical verification analysis. At first experimental investigations on trapezoidal corrugated steel sheets were simulated. It was determined that the usage of the lower yield strength ReL in numerical simulations realistically reproduces the collapse phenomenology of trapezoidal corrugated steel sheets under bending. The abstraction of the connections in honeycomb girder systems in numerical simulations was carried out with nonlinear spring elements whose stiffness behaviour was similar to the experimentally determined spring characteristic curves. The numerical simulations of experimental investigation on honeycomb girder systems allowed to verify this procedure for the numerical description of the load-carrying behaviour of the connections as well as the numerical model of honeycomb girder systems itself. To determine the maximum characteristic surface loads of honeycomb girder systems a design concept was developed and applied to the results of numerical parametric studies. The first parametric study varied fastener types, sheet thicknesses, profile types and spans with an equidistant fastener arrangement. The noncutting self-drilling screw proved to be the fastener type with the highest efficiency. It could be observed that the mechanical fastener dominated the design of honeycomb girder systems in 94 % of test cases. The second parametric study showed that a graduated fastener arrangement that is affine to the shear force distribution increases the load-bearing capacity of honeycomb girder systems. Furthermore, the investigated honeycomb girder systems with practically relevant geometric boundary conditions exhibited a constant effective moment of inertia up to reaching the maximum characteristic surface load.
