Behavior of centrally loaded steel H-columns at high temperature

An experimental study was conducted to evaluate the effects of high temperature and strain rate on the interaction behavior of the local and overall buckling of steel H-section columns at high temperature. On the basis of the experimental results obtained in this study, it was found that the maximum load of H-section columns decreased with increasing the temperature and the gradient in the descending branch of the load-deflection curves was steeper with increasing the width-to-thickness ratios. The maximum load of columns at 600 Celsius was reduced to 30%(in the case of slow strain-rate test), 40%(in the case of fast strain-rate test) of the maximum load at room temperature and was very sensitive to the strain rate. The results of the numerical simulations clearly showed that numerical analyses can be used to provide accurate predictions of the buckling characteristics of columns at high temperatures.