Axial Crushing of Multicorner Sheet Metal Columns

A method is developed for predicting crush behavior of multicorner prismatic columns subjected to an axial compressive load. The corner element of an arbitrary angle is analyzed first using rigorous methods of structural plasticity with finite deformations and rotations. On that basis, crush predictions are made for multicorner columns with an even number of corners. Static crush tests on square, hexagonal, and rhomboidal thin-walled columns are also reported here. Good correlation between the theory and experiments was obtained for the magnitude of a mean crushing force and kinematic parameters describing the process of progressive folding.