Review of European design provisions for buckling of aluminium members with longitudinal welds - part 2

As part of the ongoing revision of the Eurocodes, design provisions in EN 1999-1-1 on the buckling of longitudinally welded aluminium compression members have been subjected to a critical review. The numerical investigations described in part 1 of the paper were conducted because a need for improvement was identified. In part 2 of the paper, the main observations are presented in qualitative terms. Those observations are: the influence of the allocation of the materials to buckling classes, the influence of the imperfections plus the cross-section geometry including the position and size of the HAZ within the cross-section. Part 3 will conclude this paper by discussing the proposed design approaches in detail.