Investigations on the shear capacity of stainless steel for its use in steel and composite bridge construction

Abstract

The paper deals with the shear capacity and the shear buckling behaviour of plates made of (lean) duplex stainless steel. For this purpose, twelve experimental tests on torsionally loaded square box girders were carried out to investigate the shear capacity. Two different materials and three different buckling slendernesses were investigated. An FE model was created and calibrated using the experimental results. Subsequently, a parameter study was carried out in order to be able to cover a larger buckling slenderness range. The experimental and numerical results were then compared with the specifications of EN 1993-1-4 and an assessment of the specifications is provided.