THIN-WALLED STEEL MEMBERS AT ELEVATED TEMPERATURES CONSIDERING LOCAL IMPERFECTIONS: NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF ISOLATED PLATES

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 the amplitude of the initial local imperfections. A usual method to estimate this capacity is the simulation of isolated plates (web: four sides simply supported plate, flange: three sides simply supported plate) that are subjected to in-plane compression until instability is observed. Several researchers have proposed design methods to calculate the capacity of these steel members at elevated temperatures based on isolated plate analysis, but they used different methodologies. This variability in hypotheses happens because there is no clear provision defining the numerical modeling procedure for fire design of steel plates in the codes (European or US). The paper proposes a methodology for finite element simulation of thin plates at elevated temperatures and its governing factors (amplitude of initial local imperfections, number of half-wave geometry of local imperfections, plate geometry (sides ratio a/b)).