Sensitivity of elevated temperature load carrying capacity of thin-walled steel members to local imperfections

The local buckling capacity of fire exposed thin-walled steel cross sections is affected by the reduction in strength and stiffness due to elevated temperatures and by the amplitude of the initial local imperfections. Several researchers have proposed design methods to calculate the capacity of these steel members at elevated temperatures, but they used different methodologies and different amplitude of local imperfections in the extensive numerical analyses that are typically at the base of these methods. This variability in hypotheses happens because there is no clear provision defining the local imperfection amplitude for fire design in the codes (European or US). EN 1993-1-5 proposes amplitude values of local imperfections for ambient temperature design, while EN 1090-2 defines a -different- maximum allowed size of fabrication tolerance during production. Meanwhile, other sizes of local imperfections have also been proposed in the literature, with values different than those from EN 1993-1-5 and EN 1090-2. This paper reviews the existing code provisions and compares the existing design models and their assumptions for thin-walled steel cross sections. Finite element analyses are then conducted on isolated steel plates at elevated temperatures to investigate the effect of local imperfections. Finally, specific amplitude of local imperfections is proposed for fire design of thin-walled steel members.