Cold-formed high strength stainless steel cross-sections in compression considering interaction effects of constituent plate elements

This paper presents a numerical investigation of cold-formed high strength stainless steel square and rectangular hollow sections in compression. A non-linear finite element model which includes geometric and material non-linearities was developed and verified against experimental results. The model was then used for an extensive parametric study to investigate the interaction effects of constituent plate elements on Class 3 slenderness limit and section capacities of cold-formed high strength stainless steel square and rectangular hollow sections in compression. The numerical investigation shows that the interaction effects of constituent plate elements on cross-section response are quite obvious particularly for slender sections. The design provisions on Class 3 slenderness limit and effective width equations specified in the EC3 Code and proposed by Gardner and Theofanous are suitable for square hollow sections, but not for rectangular hollow sections since they do not take into consideration of interaction effects of constituent plate element. Hence, the new Class 3 slenderness limit and the section capacity design equations based on the whole cross-section response are proposed in this study, which carefully consider the interaction effects of constituent plate elements. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.