An explicit stress formulation for stainless steel applicable in tension and compression

In this paper an explicit stress formulation for stainless steel is presented. The formulation is applied to both tension and compression and it is an approximation to the closed form inversion of an existing two-stage stress–strain relation which is based on a modified Ramberg–Osgood equation. The validity of the explicit expression is tested over a wide range of material parameters. The tests demonstrate that the explicit formula is in excellent agreement with the fully iterated numerical solution of the full-range stress–strain relation. By incorporating an existing expression for deformation capacity, the proposed explicit formula is also used to obtain an explicit formulation for the computation of local buckling stress and compression resistance in terms of cross sectional slenderness.