Buckling; Post-Buckling; Strength and Design of Angle Columns

This paper presents procedures for the design of fixed-ended and pin-ended equal-leg angle columns with short-to-intermediate lengths. First, some numerical results concerning the buckling and post-buckling behavior of the angle columns are presented, (i) evidencing the main differences between the fixed-ended and pin-ended column responses, and (ii) showing the need for specific design procedures. Then, the paper reports an in-depth investigation aimed at gathering a large column ultimate strength data bank that includes (i) experimental values, collected from the literature, and (ii) numerical values, obtained from shell finite element analyses carried out in the code ABAQUS. The set of experimental results comprises 41 fixed-ended columns and 37 pin-ended columns, and the numerical results obtained concern 89 fixed ended columns and 28 pin-ended columns − various cross-section dimensions, lengths and yield stresses are considered. Finally, the paper closes with the proposal of new design procedures, based on the Direct Strength Method (DSM), for fixed-ended and pin-ended angle columns. The two procedures adopt modified global and local strength curves, and it is shown that the proposed DSM approach leads to accurate ultimate strength estimates for short-to-intermediate columns covering a wide slenderness range.

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