ABSTRACT
The contribution shows experimental and numerical research of welded slender stainless steel I-section beams. Difference in behavior of stainless steel and common carbon steel members is generally known, but design of stainless steel members has been established mainly for hollow sections (CHS, SHS/RHS) as these are the typical stainless steel profiles. Currently, open sections are also being used in structures and the design rules for both local buckling of very slender sections as well as lateral torsional buckling curves are based on very limited experimental and numerical research. For this reason, new research covering these phenomena has been started at the Czech Technical University in Prague. A numerical model was used for design of test arrangement, the geometrically and materially nonlinear analysis with imperfection was made in software Abaqus. The experimental program consisted of six stainless steel being used for a model validation. The tests used two stainless steel materials (austenitic and ferritic steel), one section slenderness (Class 4 for web and flange) and three beam slenderness. A parametric study based on the validated numerical model will be used to compare existing design procedures and develop a new accurate and safe design procedure.
