Out‐of‐plane flexural buckling design resistance of welded I‐members made of flame‐cut flanges

Abstract In practice, welded I‐members of steel buildings are usually made of flanges that are either wide hot‐rolled plates, or plates longitudinally divided using flame‐cuts. The residual stresses distributions resulting from both types of fabrication process are substantially different. However, the Eurocode 3 buckling design resistance of a welded I‐member in compression assumes hot‐rolled flanges, thus neglecting the beneficial impact of flame‐cuts. A parametric study is then performed regarding the out‐of‐plane flexural buckling of welded members made of flame‐cut flanges. 377 doubly symmetric members either with a uniform or a tapered cross‐section are studied. These numerical results are firstly employed to evaluate the safety and accuracy of the Eurocode 3 rules for such members by computing partial factors. The current rules proving overly conservative, two proposals are made for welded columns made of flame‐cut flanges. A first simple proposal suggests a more favorable buckling curve. A second proposal introduces an imperfection factor depending on the cross‐sectional height‐to‐width ratio. Partial factors computed for both proposals are satisfactory, the second proposal being more precise.