Bending resistance of stainless steel I-sections about minor axis

The Continuous Strength Method (CSM) is a deformation based design technique, which incorporates the strain hardening properties demonstrated by stainless steel materials. Thus produces accurate predictions of stainless steel sections under compression, bending and combined actions. This paper presents a numerical investigation on a seemingly unexplored field of minor axis bending for I-sections produced from stainless steel. Available beam tests on I-sections were simulated using finite element (FE) modelling, and once validated, the FE models were used to conduct a comprehensive parametric study to investigate bending capacity of I-sections about minor axis. Obtained FE results were used to evaluate the performances of Eurocode EN 1993-1-4+A1 (2015), Australian code AS/NZS 4673 (2001) and CSM design rules; all considered codes yielded conservative predictions for bending resistances about minor axis. Obtained numerical results were used to propose new design rules based on CSM design philosophy and are shown to produce accurate predictions for bending resistances of I-sections subjected to minor axis bending.