Behaviour and Design of Sustainable Stainless Steel Structures

Stainless steel is currently widely used across a range of industries with its key advantage over ordinary structural carbon steel being its corrosion resistance and durability. Research into stainless steel has developed significantly over the last decade, enabling its increased use for structural purposes. Currently, although a number of design standards for stainless steel exist, the provisions and checks have generally been developed following, and in conjunction with, the carbon steel design rules. Stainless steel and carbon steel have distinctly different material characteristics and therefore it is important that the codes reflect these to ensure safe, efficient and structurally sound design. The focus of this work will be on the global analysis of stainless steel frames and the development of beam-column design to allow for safe and efficient design. The extension and development of the continuous strength method, which is a deformation based design approach for metallic structures that offers improved design efficiency over current standards, and was devised in the Civil Engineering Department at Imperial College, will also be considered. Overall, the aim of the doctoral research will be to develop enhanced design rules to promote the wider use of stainless steel as a sustainable construction material.