Compressive behavior of concrete-filled square stainless steel tube stub columns

Concrete-filled square stainless steel tubes (CFSSST), which possess relatively large flexural stiffness, high corrosion resistance and require simple joint configurations and low maintenance cost, have a great potential in constructional applications. Despite that the use of stainless steel may result in high initial cost compared to their conventional carbon steel counterparts, the whole-life cost of CFSSST is however considered to be lower, which offers a competitive choice in engineering practice. In this paper, a comprehensive experimental and numerical program on 24 CFSSST stub column specimens, including 3 austenitic and 3 duplex stainless steel square hollow section (SHS) stub columns and 9 austenitic and 9 duplex CFSSST stub columns, has been carried out. Finite element (FE) models were developed to be used in parametric analysis to investigate the influence of the tube thickness and concrete strength on the ultimate capacities more accurately. Comparisons of the experimental and numerical results with the predictions made by design guides ACI 318, ANSI/AISC 360, Eurocode 4 and GB 50936 have been performed. It was found that these design methods generally give conservative predictions to the ultimate capacities of CFSSST stub columns. Improved calculation methods, developed based on the Continuous Strength Method, have been proposed to provide more accurate estimations of the ultimate resistances of CFSSST stub columns. The suitability of these proposals has been validated by comparison with the test results, where a good agreement between the predictions and the test results have been achieved.