The experimental assessment of the force components within structural steel ‘h’ sections

Abstract A technique is described for manipulating strain gauge data obtained from tests on structural steel ‘H’ sections such that individual force components may be identified. The technique recognises the different structural actions present when open sections deform in a full three-dimensional fashion (compression, major and minor axis bending, and warping) covering both elastic and elastic–plastic behaviour. The results obtained from experimental tests on beam columns exhibited excellent agreement with the corresponding predictions of a sophisticated non-linear finite element analysis.