Mechanical properties of aluminium in structural sheeting

The application of aluminium structural sheeting for buildings is growing continuously. Architectural sophisticated façades can be realized due to recent developments in production technology. But this leads to high requirements for the applied sheet material. Here, the mechanical properties of aluminium sheet are discussed. The influence of metallurgical and process parameters on the mechanical properties is shown. The assumptions and requirements in the design standards are given and discussed with respect to the properties of the sheet material determined in tensile tests. Special attention is paid to the quality of the reproduction of the stress–strain relation of material models in the range of the yield limit, because this has a strong effect on the results of nonlinear finite-element analyses of the structural behaviour. The parameters of the material models obtained from the tensile tests are compared with values given in Eurocode 9. The effect of strain hardening is investigated with reversed load tests. Differences of Young's modulus and the yield strength between tension and compression load in the first half cycle are investigated and the parameters for a nonlinear kinematic hardening model, which is applied in forming analyses, are derived from these tests.