Predicting the Buckling Strength of Spirally Welded Tapered Tubes Under Flexural Bending Using Reference Resistance Design

This paper covers the process of building capacity strength curves for medium length spirally welded tapered tubes (SWTs) under bending. The method used in this paper for building the capacity strength curves, is the Reference Resistance Design (RRD) as described in Eurocode 3 Part 1-6. The method allows an engineer with only a calculator to benefit from the complicated numerical analyses without going into the hassle of building finite element models. In this paper the flexural strength of 99 finite element models with variable slenderness ratio and imperfections amplitude are used to build the reference resistance design curves for SWT sections and validated with available SWT test results.

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