Research On The Axial Compression Capacity Of Cold-formed Stainless Steel Tubular Columns

With the increase of the overall national strength, it will be more common to see stainless steel in the civil works. Available estimates suggest that China will be the most important country in producing and using stainless steel in the next 10 years. Besides, with the incoming Olympic Games ,our country need more tourist facilities and stadiums. These new buildings are not only supposed to meet the need of practical application, but also the need of aesthetic property. All the reasons mentioned above push ahead the use of stainless steel. However, the rearch on the mechanic property of stainless steel structure members is far from fullfilling the requirement. The stainless steel members have high strenth but small thickness, so the stability problems take a important part in the design procedure.This article will use both the test performed on stainless steel circular hollow section(CHS) and the finite element model to find the columns limit strength, and also include parameter research such as the thickness, the diameter, the influences of ratio of diameter to thickness ( D/t), the slenderness ratio and the initial local and overall geometric imperfections. This article proposes an equation to calculate the stability of the stainless steel tubular members. The comparison between the suggested equation and the existing standard(Technica) Code of Cold-formed Thin-wall Steel Structures - GB50018-2002) , the experiment data and the finite element results suggests that the proposed equotion provides a better way to determine the ultimate axial compression capacity of cold-formed stainless steel tubular columns.