Experimental investigations of stainless steel channel section stub columns

• Main Author: Lee, Guang Jie
• Other Authors: Zhao Ou
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2020
• Subjects: Engineering::Civil engineering
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/145208
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

With recent advancements in manufacturing and metallurgical techniques, press-braking and hot-rolling of stainless-steel plates into shaped cross-sections become more dominant. Stainless steel is a fully recyclable material, with beneficial material properties (homogeneous property, consistent hardness, and high stiffness). In addition, the cross-sections of stainless steel manufactured through hot-rolling and press-braking have a much lower level of residual stresses than those fabricated from welding. With regards to the aforementioned advantages, a comprehensive experimental programme was carried out on channel sections, including press-braked and hot-rolled austenitic stainless steel channel stub columns and press-braked ferritic stainless steel channel stub columns. The test schedule was comprised of flat and corner material coupon tensile tests, measurements of channel specimen geometric dimensions, measurements of initial local geometric imperfection amplitudes and eighteen stub columns under the axial loading condition. The experimentally generated data were employed to assess the accuracy of the European code EN 1993-1-4 in terms of the slenderness limits for hot-rolled and press-braked channel section classifications and channel cross-section ultimate resistance predictions. The assessment results commonly indicated that (i) for the classification of stainless steel hot-rolled and press-braked channel sections, the current EC3 slenderness limits for internal and outstand plate elements in compression can be safely adopted; (ii) the EC3 design code yields unduly conservative ultimate resistance predictions for hot-rolled austenitic stainless steel non-slender channel section stub columns owing to the ignorance of the beneficial strain hardening presented by stainless steel; (iii) with regard to the EC3 effective plate method, the predicted load-carrying capacities of slender austenitic and ferritic stainless steel channel cross-sections are relatively accurate and conservative.