Abstract: The shear buckling mode of a trapezoidal corrugated steel web plate consists of a local shear buckling mode, a global shear buckling mode and an interactive shear buckling mode. The elastic local and global shear buckling strength can be calculated based on the classical elastic theory, but some deviations exist between formula and numerical results. For the interactive shear buckling mode which may occur in the box girder bridges with trapezoidal corrugated steel webs, the elastic interactive shear buckling strength can not be predicted accurately. Finite element models are firstly developed in order to analyze the shear buckling behavior of trapezoidal corrugated steel webs. In addition, the critical factors dominating the elastic shear buckling strength are found. The current formulae for calculating the elastic shear buckling strength are verified by numerical results and give unprecise predictions. Finally, extensive numerical calculation and parametric analysis are conducted to derive the formulae for calculating the elastic shear buckling strength of trapezoidal corrugated steel webs considering three kinds of shear buckling modes. The predictions obtained by the proposed formulae correlate well with the numerical results. This paper has laid the foundation for the further research of the shear strength of trapezoidal corrugated steel webs.