The Continuous Strength Method – Review and outlook

Cross-sectional behaviour and design of normal and high strength steel welded I-sections under compression and uniaxial bending

“…trueλ¯normalp≤0.68 (Afshan and Gardner, 2013)) can be determined from equation (12), where ε y is the material yield strain equal to f y / E , ε u is the strain corresponding to the material ultimate tensile stress f u and trueλ¯normalp is the cross-section slenderness defined by equation (10). Two upper bounds are applied to the strain ratio ε csm / ε y : the first limit of Ω is set to prevent excessive strains and defines the permissible level of plastic deformation on project-by-project basis, with a recommended value of 15, in line with the EN 1993-1-1 ductility requirement (Gardner et al, 2023); the second limit of C 1 ε u / ε y , where C 1 is a coefficient corresponding to the adopted quad-linear material model as described in the following paragraphs (Yun and Gardner, 2017; Yun et al, 2018a), defines a cut-off strain (restricting strains to the first three stages of the quad-linear material model described below) to avoid over-predictions of material strength when using the adopted resistance functions.…”

“…FE models were firstly established and validated against existing test results collected from the literature (Su et al, 2021(Su et al, , 2021bSun et al, 2021), and then employed to carry out parametric studies to generate supplementary numerical data covering a wide range of steel grades, cross-section geometries and loading combinations. Based on the numerically derived data, together with the test results collected from the literature (Sun et al, 2021), the current cross-section design provisions specified in EN 1993EN -1-1 (2005EN , 2019, EN 1993EN -1-12 (2007 and AISC 360-16 (2016), as well as the Continuous Strength Method (CSM) (Gardner and Nethercot, 2004;Gardner, 2008;Gardner et al, 2023;Yun et al, 2018b), were evaluated for both NSS and HSS nonslender welded I-sections under combined compression and uniaxial bending. Finally, reliability analysis was performed to evaluate the reliability levels of the different design methods according to EN 1990to EN :2002to EN (2002.…”

GMNIA‐based design of stainless steel structural systems

“…In the CSM, strain-based checks are applied. Specifically, the design value of the maximum longitudinal compressive strain εEd at each cross-section must satisfy ε Ed ε csm ⁄ ≤1.0, where εcsm is the CSM compressive strain limit that defines the maximum strain that a cross-section can endure prior to failure, determined from the CSM base curve [5]. The key steps for calculating the CSM limiting strain are detailed in this section.…”

Recent Research Advances in High-Performance Steel Tubular Members: Material Properties, Stub Columns, and Beams

“…Regarding the new design method, it is worth noting that the continuous strength method (CSM) was developed as a new design method based on a deformation-based approach that provides a constant, rational, and accurate allowance for material nonlinearity due to the spread of plasticity and strain hardening [98]. The advancement of the CSM in terms of designing stainless steel structures, including stub columns, was reviewed by Gardner et al (2023) [99].…”