Bending resistance of girth-welded stainless steel circular hollow sections: Fid-Bau Portal

Bending resistance of girth-welded stainless steel circular hollow sections

Lee, Chin-Hyung / Chang, Kyong-Ho / Park, Ki-Tae / Shin, Hyun-Seop / Kim, Taegyu

Abstract This paper investigated the bending strength of girth-welded stainless steel circular hollow sections by numerical method. At first, finite element simulation of girth welding process was carried out to obtain the weld-induced residual stresses and deformations employing sequentially coupled three-dimensional thermo-mechanical finite element formulation. Then, nonlinear finite element analysis in which the moment versus end-rotation response, the ultimate moment resistance and the failure mode of the girth-welded circular hollow sections under pure bending were explored incorporating the residual stresses and depressions along with the initial global geometric imperfections was performed. Feasibility of adopting the current codified provisions (Eurocode 3) for stainless steel circular hollow sections in bending as the cross-section slenderness limit for girth-welded stainless steel circular hollow section flexural members was also examined. Results showed that the flexural behavior of girth-welded stainless steel circular hollow sections always involves local buckling near the girth weld on the compression side, which significantly affects the moment versus end-rotation behavior. Moreover, the results demonstrated that the Class 3 slenderness limit of 280 $ε^{2}$ from Eurocode 3 for stainless steel circular hollow sections in flexure may be applied to girth-welded stainless steel circular hollow sections subjected to bending.

Highlights ● The flexural strength of girth-welded stainless steel CHS members was investigated by FE method. ● The bending resistance becomes lower as the $D / t$ ratio increases. ● The influence of the girth weld becomes more significant with increasing the $D / t$ ratio in medium shells. ● For large shells ( $D / t$ $\geq$ 150), influence of the girth weld on the bending strength is insignificant. ● The current Class3 limit of 280 $ε^{2}$ may be applied to girth-welded stainless steel CHS members in bending.