Experimental study on bearing capacity of stainless steel lipped C section stub columns

• Measured yield strength of material enhances significantly during corner regions.
• Stainless steel material is anisotropic and strength in each direction is different.
• The two buckling modes and failure mechanism for stub column are revealed.
• The code design values for bearing capacity are obviously less than test values.
• The deviation of test and predicted result reduces as the coefficient λw increases.

This paper studies the failure mechanism and the bearing capacity of stainless steel lipped C section stub columns under axial and eccentric compression. A series of tests were performed on S30408 stainless steel, including 16 mechanical property tests, 10 axially loaded and 28 eccentrically loaded stub column tests. Flat and corner coupon tests were conducted to investigate the anisotropy, the hardening index and the stress–strain behavior of stainless steel. Stub column tests were carried out to obtain the load–displacement curves, the bearing carrying capacity and the section strain variation. Comparison of test results with code predictions indicates that the design strengths are lower than the experimental strengths, and that the deviation between test and predicted results reduces as the section plate slenderness coefficient increases.