Shear Behaviour of Cold-Formed Stainless Steel Lipped Channel Sections with Web Holes

Cold-formed stainless steel structural members are increasingly used in infrastructure for their corrosion resistance, aesthetic appeal, and strain hardening. Accurate design methods are crucial for achieving optimal use of stainless steel, given its high cost. In construction, web holes are commonly introduced to cold-formed stainless-steel sections for service installation like pipes, ducts, and cables. The introduction of web holes can significantly weaken the section, reducing its load-carrying capacity, so it must be carefully considered during the design phase. Despite their importance, there are limited studies investigating the shear strength reduction due to web holes in cold-formed stainless-steel sections and assessing existing Eurocode 3 shear design provisions. To address this gap, shear strength data of cold-formed stainless steel lipped channel sections with circular web holes was collected from the literature. The collected data included austenitic and duplex stainless-steel grades and web hole ratios ranging from 0.1 to 0.85. The collected data was used to assess the applicability of current shear design guidelines in the Eurocode 3 (EN1993-1-4) structural design specification. The comparative assessment revealed that the existing guidelines for solid cold-formed stainless-steel sections cannot be extended to cold-formed stainless steel sections with web holes. The comparison revealed that these guidelines are not suitable for capturing the influence of web holes on the shear strength of cold-formed stainless steel lipped channel sections. Therefore, new shear design proposals specifically for these sections with web holes were developed based on the collected data. The proposed shear design guidelines offer more reliable predictions of ultimate shear strength for cold-formed stainless steel lipped channel sections compared to the existing Eurocode 3 (EN1993-1-3) design rules.