Investigation of residual stresses of hybrid normal and high strength steel (HNHSS) welded box sections

In order to obtain high bearing capacity and good ductility simultaneously, a structural column with hybrid normal and high strength steel (HNHSS) welded box section has been developed. Residual stress is an important factor that can influence the behaviour of a structural member in steel structures. Accordingly, the magnitudes and distributions of residual stresses in HNHSS welded box sections were investigated experimentally using the sectioning method. In this study, the following four box sections were tested: one normal strength steel (NSS) section, one high strength steel (HSS) section, and two HNHSS sections. Based on the experimental data from previous studies and the test results of this study, the effects of the width-to-thickness ratio of plate, yield strength of plate, and the plate thickness of the residual stresses of welded box sections were investigated in detail. A unified residual stress model for NSS, HSS and HNHSS welded box sections was proposed, and the corresponding simplified prediction equations for the maximum tensile residual stress ratio (σrt/fy) and average compressive residual stress ratio (σrc/fy) in the model were quantitatively established. The predicted magnitudes and distributions of residual stresses for four tested sections in this study by using the proposed residual stress model were compared with the experimental results, and the feasibility of this proposed model was shown to be in good agreement.