Cold-formed circular hollow sections under axial compression

Two series of experiments were carried out to investigate the behaviour of pinned-ended circular hollow section (CHS) columns, subjected to axial compressive load. A total of 30 columns were tested in this investigation; 20 columns in Series 1 and 10 columns in Series 2. The outside diameter-to-thickness ratio (d/t) and the slenderness ratio (KL/r) ranged from 29.7 to 46.4 and 20.8 to 82.2 for Series 1, respectively, and from 55.0 to 62.9 and 10.7 to 34.9 for Series 2, respectively. In general, Series 1 columns failed by overall flexural buckling and, whilst Series 2 columns failed by local ring-type buckling. The test strengths of the columns were compared with the strengths predicted by the South African design standard (SANS10162-1) and the European design standard (EN 1993-1-1)