A Comparative Study On The Design Of Bending Members In Chinese And American Steel Structures

Steel structures are widely used in various construction projects because they have many advantages such as high strength, lightness, good seismic performance, fast speed of construction, short duration and so on. Flexural member is a very common force member in steel structures. Therefore, the detailed studies on the flexural member are necessary.China’s specification of steel structures has made a lot of innovation and research achievements in the preparation and revision process of the recent decades. We also made reference to the setting experiences of specifications by major powers of steel structures such as USA and Japan. The design and manufacturing level of steel structures of USA is in the lead position of the world. So the use of specifications of steel structures by USA is often required in many outsourcing project tenders. No matter the Chinese experts which set the specifications of steel structures, or the Chinese engineering design and construction personals, they all want to know the differences in the design of flexural members between the specifications by China and USA.This paper selects the three specifications:GB50017-2003《Code for design of Steel structures》, GB50017-201X 《Code for design of Steel structures》(exposure draft) and AISC360-10Specification for Structural Steel Buildings. We compare the specific differences in the design of flexural members between the three specifications from the aspects of strength, stiffness, overall stability and local stability. However, overall stability is an outstanding issue in the actual steel works. Therefore, comparisons are focused on the differences between the design of overall stability in this article. We can get the specific differences in the design of flexural members between the two countries through the comparative analysis. The results can also provide some proposals for the future revisions of China’s specification of steel structures.