Abstract:
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The desirable features offered by different stainless steel grades have encouraged the use of this material in construction and the lower nickel content of the ferritic grades allows, additionally, controlling and decreasing the initial investment needs. Design expressions codified for carbon steel have been extended to stainless steel elements in EN1993-1-4, regardless their different mechanical behaviours. The study of stainless steel elements subjected to combined axial compression and bending moment includes austenitic, duplex and lean duplex grades, but experimental results on ferritic grades are still necessary to complete the analysis. Hence, an experimental programme on ferritic stainless steel RHS and SHS pin-ended elements subjected to concentric and eccentric axial compression is presented. These experimental results have been compared to the predicted ultimate capacities calculated according to the specifications codified in EN1993-1-4 and an alternative method proposed for stainless steel RHS and SHS. This assessment demonstrated that EN1993-1-4 expressions are safe and accurate concerning flexural buckling resistance predictions, but overconservative for elements subjected to axial compression and bending moment. |