Numerical analysis of ferritic stainless steel columns subjected to combined loading

Ferritic stainless steel is a material resistant to corrosion and with good aspect, whose structural behavior hasn’t been completely investigated. Nevertheless, ferritic stainless steel exhibits favorable characteristics respect to the austenitic stainless steel, for instance avoiding the content of nickel which is characterized by an unstable price, which could negatively influences the final cost of the material. For this reason it could be considered an interesting material in the field of construction. This work presents the numerical results, obtained through the FEM code Abaqus, regarding buckling analyses and non-linear analyses for geometry and material of RHS and SHS columns subjected to compression and combined bending and compression. These numerical results should support in the future the results obtained by means of experimental tests.