Flexural buckling of welded austenitic and duplex stainless steel I-section columns

The paper presents an investigation on welded stainless steel I-section columns. In total, 22 experiments on welded I-section columns, including members buckling about major and minor axis, for both austenitic and duplex stainless steel columns were carried out. Specimen cross-sections and lengths were carefully selected to cover a wide range of geometries and non-dimensional slenderness. Measurements were taken on geometry, global initial geometric imperfection, residual stresses and material properties. The experimental results have been supplemented by the finite element simulation. The resulting structural performance data have been used to assess the applicability of the current design provisions from EN 1993-1-4, ASCE 8-02 and AS/NZS 4673 for the design of stainless steel welded-I sections. Results showed that the design provisions from EN 1993-1-4 and AS/NZS 4673 can be conservatively adopted while the ASCE 8-02 provision shows scattered predictions.