Geometric and material nonlinear behaviour of steel plates in thin-walled concrete filled box columns

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the geometric and material nonlinear behaviour of steel plates as part of a thin-walled concrete filled box column. A finite element analysis is utilised to investigate the effects of various geometric imperfections, residual stresses and width to thickness ratios on the post-local buckling behaviour and strength of clamped steel plates. A novel method is developed for determining the fictitious critical loads of plates associated with a nonlinear analysis. An effective width model is proposed for the design of clamped steel plates, and is used in the calculation of the ultimate strength of short thin-walled concrete filled box columns. Finally, the proposed design model is compared with existing experiments with a good degree of parity.