Structural design of high-strength austenitic stainless steel

Abstract

Efficient use of material is an important factor in achieving economical and sustainable structures. Typically, annealed austenitic stainless steel has a material strength of around 220 N/mm 2 , somewhat lower than that of common structural carbon steel grades. This lower strength, coupled with the higher material cost, puts stainless steel at a significant disadvantage when considering material selection, despite its other desirable properties.However, the strength of stainless steel may, at relatively low expense, be considerably enhanced through modification of the chemical composition and through the process of cold-working due to the strain hardening nature of the material. This strength enhancement has not generally been utilised in practice due to a lack of knowledge of the structural behaviour of this high strength material. Given the high material cost of stainless steel, the need to optimise the efficiency of design methods and to develop the performance, availability and diversity of the current product range is clear. To this end, this paper describes tests, numerical modelling and the development of design guidance for high strength stainless steel members in a range of structural configurations. Material tensile tests, member tests in compression and member tests in bending have been Gardner, L., Talja, A. and Baddoo, N. R. (2006). Structural design of high strength austenitic stainless steel. Thin-Walled Structures. 44(5), 517-528.2

Behaviour of structural stainless steel cross-sections under combined loading – Part I: Experimental study

“…Steel transfer plates were placed between the specimen and the two loading points to distribute the load and wooden blocks were inserted into the tube at the loading points to prevent web crippling. A similar arrangement has been successfully employed in previous studies [12,41]. Strain gauges were attached to the top and bottom flanges of the test specimens at a distance of 5 mm from the mid-span to avoid contact with the string potentiometer, which was placed at mid-span to measure the vertical deflection.…”

“…Stub column tests on different cross-section classes have been carried out to study the compressive response and local buckling behaviour of austenitic [9][10][11][12][13][14] and duplex [15,16] stainless steel cross-sections. Three-point and four-point bending tests have been performed to investigate the flexural response and rotation capacity of austenitic [17][18][19][20][21] and duplex [22,23] stainless steel beams under a moment gradient and constant moment, respectively.…”

Testing and numerical modelling of lean duplex stainless steel hollow section columns

“…Owing to the thin-walled nature of tubular sections, and in line with similar previous investigations [7,20,25,26,27], shell elements were employed to discretise the models. The 4-noded doubly curved shell element with reduced integration S4R [24] has been utilised in this study.…”

“…Comparisons with the test results are made to assess the accuracy of the models and verify their suitability for performing parametric studies. to provide suitable local imperfections for inclusion in numerical models to accurately simulate tests [25][26][27], and to provide a means of predicting measured imperfection amplitudes directly [19,25]. This model was therefore employed in the parametric studies described in this paper to derive local imperfection amplitudes for both the stub columns and long columns.…”

Flexural behaviour of stainless steel oval hollow sections

“…All specimens were manufactured by Oval 316 as cold-rolled and seam welded sections with a minimum specified yield strength (0.2% proof strength) of 240 N/mm 2 according to EN 10088-2 [24]. However, the strength of cold-formed stainless steel sections is often far higher than both the minimum specified values and the mill certificate values for the flat sheet material, as a result of cold-work during forming [25][26][27].…”