Structural behaviour of cold-formed stainless steel tubular members

Abstract

This thesis examines the behaviour of cold-formed stainless steel tubular structural members, with an emphasis on ferritic stainless steels. Owing to the high comparative expense of stainless steel relative to traditional carbon steel, this study aims to identify and develop means of utilising the material more efficiently. A comprehensive material test programme was carried out as part of an extensive study into the prediction of strength enhancements in cold-formed structural sections that arise during production. Material tests on a total of 51 flat coupons and 28 corner coupons, extracted from a total of 18 cross-sections formed from a wide range of materials, were performed. A new, simple and universal predictive model for harnessing the cold-formed induced strength enhancements was developed which offers, on average, 19% and 36% strength enhancements for the cross-section flat faces and corner regions, respectively, relative to the strength of the unformed material. Ferritic stainless steels, having no or very low nickel content, offer a more viable alternative for structural applications to the more commonly used austenitic stainless steels, reducing both the level and variability of the initial material cost. There is currently limited information available on the structural performance of this type of stainless steel. Therefore, to overcome this limitation, a series of material, cross-section and member tests have been performed on two ferritic grades EN 1.4003 and EN 1.4509. The experimental results were used to assess the applicability of the current codified design provisions to ferritic stainless steel structural components. Moreover, the elevated temperature performance of ferritic stainless steels, covering the material response and the flexural buckling behaviour, was investigated through analysis of experimental and numerical results, leading to proposals for suitable design recommendations. Finally, simplifications and refinements to the recently developed continuous strength method (CSM) were made. Comparison of the predicted capacities with over 140 collected test results on stainless steel stub columns and cross-sections in bending shows that the CSM offers improved accuracy and reduced scatter relative to the current design methods. The reliability of the approach has been demonstrated by statistical analyses, enabling its use in structural design standards.