Effective width method to account for the local buckling of steel thin plates at elevated temperatures

• Numerical results of the ultimate plate strength at elevated temperatures.
• Effective width method in the Eurocode 3 needs to be reviewed.
• Expressions of EC3 do not take into account the influence of the steel grade.
• A proposal for calculating the effective width at elevated temperature is made.
• The new proposal leads to better results when compared with the numerical ones.

The local buckling of thin steel plates exposed to fire is investigated using a finite element model. The reduction of strength and stiffness that occurs at elevated temperatures needs to be taken into account in the design, as it increases the susceptibility to local buckling of the plates thus affecting their load carrying capacity. The obtained results show that the current existing design method of Eurocode 3 to take into consideration the local buckling in the calculation of the ultimate strength of steel thin plates at elevated temperatures needs to be improved. These methods are based on the same principles as for normal temperature but using for the design yield strength of steel, at elevated temperatures, the 0.2% proof strength of the steel instead of its strength at 2% total strain as for the cases where the local buckling is not limiting the ultimate strength of the plates. This consideration, however, leads to an inconsistency if cross-sections are composed simultaneous of plates susceptible and not to local buckling. To address this issue, new expressions for calculating the effective width of internal compressed elements (webs) and outstand elements (flanges) are proposed, which have been derived from the actual expressions of the Part 1.5 of the Eurocode 3 and validated against numerical results. It is also demonstrated that it is not necessary to use for the yield stress at elevated temperatures the 0.2% proof strength of the steel instead of the yield stress at 2% total strain, given that the necessary allowances are considered in these new expressions, thus leading to a more economic design.