Computation of Micro-Strains in Cold Formed Steels- FEA Approach

This paper describes the computations of micro-strains at inner corner of cold formed rectangular hollow sections (CFRHS) made up of structural steels using finite element analysis. In order to obtain the micro-strains, distortion test is simulated by modeling two-dimensional structural steel tubes in ANSYS software. Two dimensional linear static analyses are performed by defining elastic properties of steel. These simulations were performed for tubes with outer radius to thickness ( ro/t) ratios of 3. In real distortion tests, the direction of force at outer corner of the tube may vary in terms of angle. Therefore, this fact is taken into account while performing simulations. One more aspect is taken into consideration which is related to strain gauge placement during distortion testing. This problem is analyzed by modeling three-dimensional structural tubes and performing linear static analyses to investigate the variations in strains at inner bent section of the tube with different strain gauge locations.