Structural Performance and Design Analyses of S960 Ultra-high Strength Steel Welded I-section Members
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This paper focuses on the structural behaviour and design of S960 ultra-high strength welded I-section members under different loading cases. The experimental programme was firstly conducted, including tensile coupon tests, measurements of membrane residual stresses and initial geometric imperfections, axial compression tests on 16 stub columns and 20 long columns, eccentric compression tests on 20 stub columns and 8 long columns and four-point bending tests on 8 beams. A nu-merical modelling programme was afterwards conducted, where finite element models were initially developed and validated against the test results and then adopted to conduct extensive parametric studies to generate further numerical data over a wider range of cross-section dimensions, member lengths and loading com-binations. The obtained test and numerical results were used to evaluate the ap-plicability of the current design rules to S960 ultra-high strength steel welded I-section members under different loading cases (i.e. assessments of slenderness limits for cross-section classification, effective width expressions, column buckling curves and load–moment interaction curves). Based on the evaluation results, the new efficient design approaches were proposed, with the reliability verified through statistical analyses, providing the fundamental basis for the future revisions of Eu-rocode.