AUTHOR
Zanella, Eros

DATE
2003-10-02

DEPARTMENT
Civil and Mining Engineering / Steel Structures

SUMMARY
The progress of structural engineering in the recent years indisputably tends toward the use of lighter structural elements. Improved techniques in a manufacturing of thin walled elements and in corrosion protection have led to increased competitiveness of such products in the building applications. One example of such structural element is a column, developed at Plannja AB, Luleå, for use in industrial buildings. The column has a polygonal cross section with a rather thin “cover plate”. Objective of this work is to study the “Plannja column” in design situations and to investigate possible design models. The structural behaviour of the column is a mixture between the open and closed cross-section, which has been studied using analytical and numerical methods. FEM and FSM were used for buckling analysis performed in order to assume initial imperfection for the non-linear analysis. Two well-controlled experiments were performed which were used to validate non-liner FEA done by ABAQUS and good agreement was obtained. Finally, design recommendations were drawn based on a comparison between Eurocode 3 and parametric non-linear FE study.

ISSN 1402-1617 / ISRN LTU-EX--03/273--SE / NR 2003:273