Behaviour of Cold Formed Built - Up Steel Compression Member

Abstract

The use of cold-formed thin-walled steel structural members has increased in recent years. Especially, Cold-formed steel columns are widely used in the construction industry due to their lightweight, easy installation, erection and economy. The strength and efficiency of cold-formed steel profiles depends on the cross-sectional shape, which controls the three fundamental buckling modes: local, distortional and global. As most of their sections are open with only one symmetrical axis, they would likely fail by twisting and interacted with the other buckling modes such as local and distortional buckling. In order to improve the ultimate strength of columns, a built-up column section with distinct shape was selected from the detailed study of Literatures and three specimens of thickness 1.6mm were fabricated with different lengths 500mm, 600mm and 700mm. Consequently, buckling behaviour of built up steel members was investigated theoretically with Direct Strength Method (with the help of CuFSM) as well as experimentally and the results were compared with the buckling modes obtained numerically using ANSYS software and it is found that the ultimate load carrying capacity of the column increases with the decrease of slenderness ratio and finally a new innovative and economical column element was presented.