Development of design rules in the AISC Design Guide for structural stainless steel

• Review of applications of structural stainless steel.
• Design rules for hot rolled and welded stainless steel sections.
• Comparison of AISC carbon and stainless design rules.
• Statistical analyses to demonstrate reliability.

This paper describes the development of an AISC (American Institute of Steel Construction) Design Guide for hot rolled and welded structural stainless steel sections. Where stainless steel behaves in a similar way to carbon steel, the Design Guide simply refers to the relevant section in ANSI/AISC 360-10 Specification for Structural Steel Buildings. Where the guidance in the AISC Specification would be unconservative when applied to stainless steel, specific rules for stainless steel were derived and presented in a format as close as possible to the equivalent expressions in AISC 360. The stainless steel design rules were calibrated against an extensive database of test results on members and connections. A full reliability analysis was carried out to calculate the LRFD resistance factors; in most cases, the carbon steel resistance factors were shown to be applicable to stainless steel also.