Experimental study of laser-welded stainless steel angle columns

Abstract

Substantial research has been conducted in the last years into the structural responses of cold-formed and hot-rolled stainless steel equal-leg angle columns, whereas there is no experimental data on laser-welded stainless steel angle columns despite these sections being increasingly used in the modern construction industry. To fill this gap and provide benchmarks for design, a comprehensive experimental investigation into the structural strength and stability of laser-welded austenitic stainless steel equal-leg angle columns under pure axial compression was performed and described in this paper. A series of laboratory tests, performing on two test groups of specimens with nominal dimensions of 60 × 60 × 6 mm and 100 × 100 × 10 mm and different lengths, involved 6 stub column tests and 20 global buckling tests together with measurements on material properties, initial local geometric imperfections and residual stresses. The experimental observations reveal that the column ultimate capacity and prevalent failure mode — major-axis flexural-torsional buckling and minor-axis flexural buckling — are highly dependent on the column slenderness and initial imperfections. The full load-lateral displacement, load-torsional rotation and load-axial strain responses of the specimens were fully reported and discussed. The results were employed to evaluate the accuracy of the current European and North American stainless steel design standards. The evaluation results revealed that the codified design procedures yield conservative resistance predictions of laser-welded stainless steel equal-leg angle columns, showing a prospective for their modification and improvement by providing more optimized and realistic results in design considering the actual residual stress distributions, material nonlinearity and strain hardening.