Engineering Commons^™

Buckling And Crippling Of Square Steel Thin-Walled Tubes Fabricated With Symmetrically-Overlapping U-Channels And Foam, David Camenish Gelder

Theses and Dissertations

Testing and analysis has been performed on square steel thin-walled tubes fabricated using symmetrically-overlapping U-channels and foam. This research analyzes flange-to-flange attachment, effect of foam in the columns, effect of adhesive stiffness, and influence of steel thickness, as related to the local buckling loads, global buckling loads, and crippling loads. Four 14-foot (4.27 m) foam-filled, thin-walled, galvanized steel columns were manufactured by Novatek, Inc. and tested in axial compression with pinned boundary conditions. For three of the four configurations, the two-piece 4-in. (10.2-cm) square shell surrounded prefabricated polystyrene foam inserts; the fourth column had no foam insert. The column outer …