Innovative hollow columns comprising corrugated plates and ultra high-strength steel tubes

Latest development in material and manufacturing technologies make it possible to increase the yield strength of steel to more than 1200 MPa. These steel grades are suitable for structural and safety-related automotive components. The high-strength level gives potential for considerable weight reduction and a cost-effective way to produce energy efficient products. Following the recently introduced hollow corrugated columns, this paper presents an advanced innovative hollow corrugated column by incorporating ultra high-strength (UHS) steel tubes. The superior performance of the proposed column under compressive loading is investigated in the present work. UHS tubes used at the corners have yield stress of 1250 MPa. Three different corrugated plates are introduced and fabricated so that the effect of corrugation geometry parameters such as angle of inclination and height of corrugation get experimentally investigated. Along with experiments, an advanced finite element model is developed for predicting the behaviour of proposed columns and validated by experimental results. The geometric imperfection, material and geometric nonlinearities, and heat affected zone generated due to welding are included in the FE analysis. The results prove the high capacity and ductility of the proposed innovative columns under compression compared to, the accumulated capacity of the individual components. Finally, the proposed high-strength columns are compared with the conventional columns in terms of weight and manufacturing costs. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.