Buckling analysis of high strength stainless steel stiffened and unstiffened slender hollow section columns

This paper investigates the buckling behaviour of cold-formed high strength stainless steel stiffened and unstiffened slender square and rectangular hollow section columns. The high strength duplex material is austenitic-ferritic stainless steel approximately equivalent to EN 1.4462 and UNS S31803. The columns were compressed between fixed ends at different column lengths. A nonlinear finite element model has been developed to investigate the behaviour of stiffened slender square and rectangular hollow section columns. The column strengths, load-shortening curves as well as failure modes were predicted for the stiffened and unstiffened slender hollow section columns. An extensive parametric study was conducted to study the effects of cross-section geometries on the strength and behaviour of the stiffened and unstiffened columns. The investigation has shown that the high strength stainless steel stiffened slender hollow section columns offer a considerable increase in the column strength over that of the unstiffened slender hollow section columns. The column strengths predicted from the parametric study were compared with the design strengths calculated using the American Specification, Australian/New Zealand Standard and European Code for cold-formed stainless steel structures. It is shown that the design strengths obtained using the three specifications are generally conservative for the cold-formed stainless steel unstiffened slender square and rectangular hollow section columns, but slightly unconservative for the stiffened slender square and rectangular hollow section columns.