The Continuous Strength Method of Cold-formed Stainless Steel Equal-leg Angle Section Stubs

Abstract

Structural stainless steel requires appropriate recognition of its beneficial properties such as material nonlinearity and significant strain hardening. The recently proposed Continuous Strength Method (CSM) exploits those benefits through a strain based approach for both stocky and slender cross-sections, and is shown to yield a higher level of accuracy and consistency, as well as design efficiency, in the capacity predictions of stainless steel cross-sections. Although there have been extensive and comprehensive studies on SHS, RHS, round tubes and H-sections stubs, but research into cold-formed stainless steel equal-leg angle section stubs remains scarce. In this paper, the scope of the CSM is extended to cover the design of cold-formed stainless steel equal-leg angle section stubs. Developed FE models included material nonlinearities as well as initial geometric imperfections. A comprehensive parametric study has been carried out covering a wide range of slenderness with different cross section geometries for the considered angle stubs. Cross-section resistances obtained from the numerical study were used to assess the performance of the current Continuous Strength Method (DSM) guidelines and EC3 when applied for stainless steel equal-leg angle section stubs; obtained comparisons showed considerable conservatism. A modified design method for cold-formed stainless steel equal-leg angle section stubs is proposed herein following CSM techniques, which provides considerably more accurate predictions for the considered cold-formed stubs. Reliability of the proposed design equations is also presented showing a good agreement with both experimentally and numerically obtained results.