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Stainless steel structural sections possess several features that result in a significantly different response to that of equivalent carbon steel sections. To date these features have not been fully recognized in design codes, which have largely adapted rules devised for carbon steel in a rather simplistic fashion. Recently, a new approach for dealing with local buckling and the associated loss of effectiveness that does not utilize the concepts of either cross-sectional classification or effective cross-sectional properties has been developed for stainless steel and has also been applied to other nonlinear metallic materials. The method is based directly on the deformation capacities of cross sections and covers the behavior of stainless steel members subjected to flexural buckling and combined axial load plus bending. The proposed method has been verified using test results and its performance has been compared against the existing ASCE and Eurocode design guidance for structural stainless steel. Significantly improved and more consistent predictions have been obtained using the proposed method without any extra calculation effort. DOI: 10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9445(2008)134:3(402) CE Database subject headings: Column beams: Bending: Compression; Cross sections: Stainless steel: Structural design.

An experimental study was conducted into the degree of composite action that can arise between cold-formed steel joists and wood-based flooring panels. A series of material, push-out and 4-point bending tests were carried out, and alternative means of shear connection, featuring fasteners and adhesives, were investigated. It was found that the spacing of the fasteners and the application of structural adhesive at the beam-board interface had a significant influence on the attained degree of shear connection and, hence, the moment capacity and flexural stiffness of the system. The highest degree of shear connection (up to approximately 60%) was obtained using the structural adhesive, bringing corresponding increases in capacity and stiffness of approximately 100 and 40%, respectively, over the bare steel. Smaller, but still very significant, increases in capacity and stiffness were achieved through the use of screws alone. On the basis of the results of the push-out tests, a load-slip relationship for screw fasteners in wood-based floorboards was proposed; this was designed for use in future analytical and numerical models. The findings of this research demonstrate, for the first time, the benefits that can be derived through the practical exploitation of composite action in cold-formed steel flooring systems in terms of enhanced structural performance and efficiency of material use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An experimental and numerical study of the flexural buckling behavior of hot-finished high-strength steel (HSS) square and rectangular hollow section (SHS and RHS, respectively) columns is described in this paper. A total of 30 hot-finished S460 and S690 hollow section column specimens have been tested in compression with pin-ended boundary conditions. Finite element (FE) models have been developed to replicate the experiments and employed in a subsequent parametric study considering a range of member geometries. Based on the test and FE results, the applicability of the current column design curves in European, North American, Chinese and Australian structural steel design standards to hot-finished HSS SHS and RHS columns has been verified by means of reliability analyses [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An experimental and numerical study of ferritic stainless steel tubular cross sections under combined loading is presented in this paper. Two square hollow section (SHS) sizes--SHS 40 × 40 × 2 and SHS 50 × 50 × 2 made of Grade EN 1.4509 (AISI 441) stainless steel--were considered in the experimental program, which included 2 concentrically loaded stub column tests, 2 four-point bending tests, and 14 eccentrically loaded stub column tests. In parallel with the experimental investigation, a finite-element (FE) study was also conducted. Following validation of the FE models against the test results, parametric analyses were carried out to generate further structural performance data. The experimental and numerical results were analyzed and compared with the design strengths predicted by the current European stainless steel design code EN 1993-1-4 and American stainless steel design specification SEI/ASCE-8. The comparisons revealed that the codified capacity predictions for ferritic stainless steel cross sections under combined loading are unduly conservative. The deformation- based continuous strength method (CSM) has been extended to cover the case of combined loading. The applicability of CSM to the design of ferritic stainless steel cross sections under combined loading was also evaluated. The CSM was shown to offer substantial improvements in design efficiency over existing codified methods. Finally, the reliability of the proposals was confirmed by means of statistical analyses according to both the SEI/ASCE-8 requirements and those of EN 1990. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]