ABSTRACT
Stainless steel has different advantages when compared to conventional carbon steel. The corrosion resistance and aesthetic appearance are the most known, but its higher fire resistance can also be decisive. With its increased use, the validation of existing design rules, for structural elements made of this material, becomes urgent. In order to have a comprehensive understanding of the overall thin-walled members’ fire resistance, it is important to first analyse the cross-section resistance at elevated temperatures, which is directly affected by local instabilities occurrence on the composed thin plates. This work presents a numerical study on the behaviour of stainless steel slender cross-sections under bending and under axial compression at elevated temperatures, with the purpose of evaluating the accuracy of Eurocode 3 design formulations for the effective section calculation. The obtained numerical results are compared with the Eurocode prescriptions and with a recently proposed method, concluding that the design methodologies should be improved for rectangular hollow profiles.
