Recorded at the Young Researchers Conference 2020.
The structural behaviour of high strength steel tubular elements has been investigated experimentally in a number of previous studies such as Ma et al. (2016) and Wang and Gardner (2017). However, the test data are still relatively scarce, and further results are required for the development of safe and efficient design provisions.
In the meantime, new techniques such as 3D laser-scanning and digital image correlation (DIC) have been widely used in other fields such as automotive engineering and solid mechanics, but their application in structural testing is yet to be explored.
Therefore, an experimental study was conducted with the aim to:
- Investigate the local buckling behaviour of high strength steel square and rectangular hollow sections (SHS and RHS) under combined loading
- Analyse the distribution of local imperfections in the test specimens through 3D laser-scanning
- Determine the full-field strain and deformation fields and visualise the development of local buckling through digital image correlation
Testing of high strength steel tubular sections utilising advanced experimental techniques