The use of stainless steel in structures

The past 15 years have seen the introduction or major revision of structural stainless steel design codes throughout the world, and at the same time, interest in the use of stainless steel in construction has been accelerating. Historically the high initial material cost of stainless steel has limited its use primarily to specialist and prestige applications. However, the emergence of design codes, a better awareness of the additional benefits of stainless steel and a transition towards sustainability are bringing more widespread use into conventional structures. Although a number of similarities between stainless steel and ordinary carbon steel exist, there is sufficient diversity in their physical properties to require separate treatment in structural design. In addition to the straightforward differences in basic material properties (such as Young's modulus and yield strength), further fundamental differences exist, such as the nature of the stress–strain curve and the material's response to cold-work and elevated temperatures; these have implications at ultimate, serviceability and fire limit states. This paper describes the use of stainless steel as a structural material, discusses current structural design provisions, reviews recent research activities and highlights the important findings and developments

Flexural behaviour of hot-finished high strength steel square and rectangular hollow sections

High strength steels, considered in the context of the structural Eurocodes, as steels with a yield strength over 460 MPa, are gaining increasing attention from structural engineers and researchers owing to their potential to enable lighter and more economic structures. This paper focuses on the bending strength of hot-finished high strength steel (HSS) square and rectangular hollow sections; the results of detailed experimental and numerical studies are presented and structural design rules for HSS cross-sections are proposed. A total of 22 in-plane bending tests, in three-point bending and four-point bending configurations, on HSS sections in grades S460 and S690 were conducted. The experimental results were replicated by means of non-linear finite element modelling. Upon validation of the finite element models, parametric studies were performed to assess the structural response of HSS sections over a wider range of cross-section slenderness, cross-section aspect ratio and moment gradient. The experimental results combined with the obtained numerical results were used to assess the suitability of the current European (EN 1993-1-1 and EN 1993-1-12) cross-section classification limits for HSS structural components. The reliability of the proposed cross-section classification limits was verified by means of the EN 1990 - Annex D method.The Research Fund for Coal and Steel (RFCS) under grant agreement No. RFSR CT 2012-00028. V&M DEUTSCHLAND GMBH, Mr. Gordon Herbert, Mr. Fillip Kirazov and Mr. Isaak Vryzidi