Experimental investigation of flexural buckling of cold formed built-up stainless steel members

Stainless steel is characterized by a number of features that determine significantly different behaviour of structural members made of this material, compared to equivalent carbon steel members. These characteristics, mostly expressed at compressed members, are reflected in nonlinear stress- strain behaviour, significant strength enhancements due to cold-working and different thermal characteristic of material. European stainless steel standard EN 1993-1-4 does not give any explicit rules for calculation of resistance of built-up compression members with chords in contact. This paper presents part of the experimental results of flexural buckling ultimate resistance cold-formed built-up members to the around intangible axis. The basic material used in the research is stainless steel with austenitic microstructure 1.4301. Members are made of two C profiles, directly and discontinuously connected in direction of longitudinal axis. The experimental values of ultimate resistances to flexural buckling around intangible axis are compared with values of ultimate resistances obtained by recommendations of EN 1993-1-4 and EN 1993-1-1