Design of cold-formed high strength steel tubular beams

A numerical investigation on cold-formed high strength steel (HSS) tubular beams is presented in this paper. The nominal 0.2% proof stresses of the HSS sections ranged from 700 MPa to 1100 MPa. In the complementary study [1], experimental investigation on the beam specimens have been performed. In the present study, numerical modelling methodology for beams was first validated and parametric study on the cold-formed HSS tubular beams was conducted. A total of 423 numerical data was obtained to investigate the structural performance of HSS tubular beams. The experimental and numerical results were then compared with the codified design guidelines from ANSI/AISC 360-10 [2], EN 1993-1-1 [3], AS 4100 [4] and AISI S100 [5] in addition to the predictions from Direct Strength Method (DSM) for square hollow sections (SHS), rectangular hollow sections (RHS) and circular hollow sections (CHS). The codified slenderness limits for sections subjected to bending were examined. Improvements on the design guidelines are proposed in this paper.