Structural behavior of metallic columns

Abstract

Stainless steel was developed in the early 1900’s constituting of ferrite and austenite. The second type of steel was the carbon steel which was more useful due to the ability to resist intergranular corrosion and had lower nickel content than the stainless steel. After the development of carbon steel, which was a big step evolving and lowering the nickel content, it was time to discover a new material as helpful as carbon steel but maybe more cost efficient and maybe experiencing better capacity. Carbon steel has been used before but now stainless steel is being used more and more because of the new evolved stainless steel which is the lean duplex stainless steel. At the year of 1980’s lean duplex stainless steel was developed for favorable reasons, one of the main reasons was its low nickel content. As all may know, stainless steel is considered high priced in the construction industry because of its main initial (nickel content), but thanks to lean duplex stainless steel (LDSS) this problem will vanish due to the low nickel content. The aim of this thesis project is to study the behavior of metallic columns regarding their cross sections, lengths and the grade used whether it was carbon steel or LDSS, with the help of the software ABAQUS; alongside of the sections of the columns, the imperfection modes and imperfection amplitudes played a big role in the comparison of the materials because each column experienced different attitudes due to the difference in imperfections. After performing all the models and examining each section whether it is affected by an attribute or not results were shown. It appeared that the lean duplex stainless steel columns performed a better column capacity then the carbon steel columns. Finally, a comparison was made between each section of the columns by using the two different grades of steel and finally in the conclusion recommendations concerning the design were produced.