DESIGN OF COLD-FORMED STAINLESS-STEEL TUBULAR MEMBERS .1. COLUMNS

The paper presents compression tests on square and circular stainless steel tubes, including stub column and long column tests. An important part of the test program was to quantify the increase in column stren gth resulting from cold work during the fabrication process. Tension a nd compression tests on coupons cut from finished tubes were also incl uded in the test program, as were measurements of residual strains pro duced by the cold-rolling process. A design method is proposed for sta inless steel tubular columns. The method incorporates the increase in strength produced by the cold-rolling process and is validated by comp aring it to the test strengths. It is demonstrated that the proposed d esign procedure provides column strengths that are much closer to the test strengths than design strengths based on the annealed material pr operties. The design procedure proposed is an extension of that descri bed in the ASCE Specification for the Design of Cold-formed Stainless Steel Structural Members.