Design of cold-formed singly symmetric compression members

Abstract

Test strengths of cold-formed plain and lipped channels were compared with the design rules of the Australian/New Zealand, American and European standards for cold formed steel structures. The comparison with the Australian/New Zealand, American and European specifications for cold-formed steel structures showed that a fixed-ended channel column can be designed using an effective length of half of the column length and the applied force can be assumed to act at the centroid of the effective section. The comparison also showed that the current design rules lead to very conservative predictions for pin-ended columns. The shift of the effective centroid, as predicted by the Australian/New Zealand and the American specifications, was inaccurate.