A refined model for local buckling of rectangular CFST columns with binding bars

This paper presents a refined model for local buckling of rectangular concrete-filled steel tubular (CFST) columns with binding bars under axial compression due to a deficiency in the previous model i.e. the influences of horizontal spacing and diameter of binding bars were not considered. The influences of longitudinal spacing, horizontal spacing and diameter of binding bars on the critical local buckling stress can be reasonably considered in the proposed model, which is applicable to both elasto-plastic phase and elastic phase. The refined model is verified against the experimental results, showing better agreement than the previous model. Then, the proposed model is employed to investigate the influences of longitudinal spacing, horizontal spacing, diameter of binding bars and cross-sectional aspect ratios on the critical local buckling stress. It is found that the critical local buckling stress increases considerably with the decrease of the spacing of binding bars. Furthermore, the influence of longitudinal spacing of binding bars on the critical local buckling stress is more significant than that of horizontal spacing. It is also found that the critical local buckling stress increase modestly with the increase of diameter of binding bars in the case of small spacing of binding bars. In addition, the cross-sectional aspect ratio have little influence on the critical local buckling stress, which can be ignored. Aiming at delaying the occurrence of local buckling of steel plates in rectangular CFST columns with binding bars, it is suggested that decreasing longitudinal spacing as an efficient measure has priority over other measures.