Work is nearing completion on a three-year European project to develop design guidance for cold-worked stainless steel, based on an extensive programme of tests and numerical analyses. The SCI has been the project co-ordinator of this EUR 914,000 project, as well as having responsibility for developing the overall design guidance and carrying out some numerical analyses. Before the start of this project there were no generally accepted theoretical and experimental rules for the design of structural elements made from cold-worked stainless steel. This project aims to generate the necessary theoretical and experimental knowledge and develop the design rules that are necessary to enable the benefits of cold working to be applied in practice. The project studied the following subjects: various grades of stainless steel-cold worked to different levels subject to uniaxial and biaxial tests;
welded connections subject to tensile loads; fatigue of welded joints; fire tests on material specimens, beams and columns; fatigue and load tests on bars and the welded connection between bars and plates. The project partners were: the Steel Construction Institute; Outokumpu Research Foundation (Sweden) with subcontractor LTU (Sweden); Outokumpu Polarit Oy (Finland) with subcontractor VTT (Finland); Studiengesellschaft Stahlanwendung eV (Germany) with subcontractor RWTH (Germany); CSM (Italy); CTICM (France); Ugine&ALZ (France). The project started in July 2001 and will be complete by the end of 2004.
