Design Procedure for Stainless Steel Slender I Section Members in Bending

Abstract

AbstractStainless steel welded I sections are used in structures not as often as cold‐rolled hollow sections or laser‐welded sections. But the design rules for both local buckling of very slender sections as well as lateral torsional buckling reduction factors are based on a very limited experimental and numerical research. For this reason, a new research covering these phenomena was carried out at the Czech Technical University in Prague. The contribution shows a numerical parametric study of welded slender stainless steel I‐section beams as a follow‐up of previous experimental program. The numerical study based on a validated FE model was carried out to develop a procedure for LTB of I section beams. The proposal follows the procedure of Taras, which is part of prEN 1993‐1‐1:2019, where modified constants are proposed. It was also found, that the local buckling reduction factor used in EN 1993‐1‐4:2006 may be unsafe for ordinary welded sections. The procedure in the Eurocode was developed mainly for SHS/RHS and laser‐welded sections. These fabrication methods result in significantly lower geometrical imperfections and slightly lower residual stresses than common welding methods (e.g. MIG). Therefore, a safe procedure proposal for Class 4 welded section resistance was also provided, despite not being the focus of the paper.