Testing and design of conventional and novel stainless steel hollow structural sections

The topic of this thesis is the testing and design of conventionally formed and additive manufactured stainless steel hollow structural sections. Although design codes currently exist for stainless steel hollow structural elements, the provisions are based on limited structural data and therefore require further evaluation for their suitability, and are not intended to apply to additive manufactured elements. Focussing on conventionally formed circular hollow sections (CHS), the existing design provisions have been carefully reappraised based on a dataset of tests and finite element results generated in this study and existing tests collected from the literature. In total, 37 concentrically loaded column tests, 26 beam-column tests and 10 stub column tests have been undertaken on austenitic, duplex and ferritic stainless steel CHS. The experimental data has been supplemented with over 2400 finite element case studies. The reappraisal highlighted that there is additional capacity to be sought at the cross-section level for pure compression, bending and combined loading, and at the member level for beam-columns, but the current CHS flexural buckling provisions were found to be unconservative for certain global slenderness values. Based on these observations, revised design rules have been proposed. Additive manufactured sections, not currently covered by structural design standards, have also been investigated. An experimental programme consisting of 28 tensile coupon tests, 14 compressive coupon tests and 5 square hollow section (SHS) stub column tests has been undertaken. The initial results indicate general applicability of existing design standards to these new novel sections. Open Access