Behavior of thin-walled circular hollow section tubes subjected to bending

Thin-walled steel circular hollow sections (CHSs) are widely used in wind turbine towers. The tower tubes are mainly subjected to bending. There have been a few experimental studies on the bending behavior of thin-walled CHS steel tubes. This paper describes a series of bending tests to examine the influence of section slenderness on the inelastic and elastic bending properties of thin-walled CHS. In addition, the influence of stiffeners welded in the steel tube is considered. Sixteen bending tests were performed up to failure on different sizes of CHS with diameter-to-thickness ratio (D/t) varying from 75 to 300. The experimental results showed that the specimens with small diameter-to-thickness ratios failed by extensive plastification on the central part of the tube. With the increase of diameter-to-thickness ratio, the local buckling phenomena became more pronounced. The stiffeners in the steel tubes increased the load carrying capacity and improved the ductility of the specimens. The experimental results were compared with current design guidelines on thin-walled steel members in AISC-LRFD, AS4100 and European Specification. It was found that the test results agreed well with the results based on AS4100 design code.