Testing of Additively Manufactured Stainless Steel Tubular Stub Columns

Abstract Additive manufacturing, commonly known as 3D printing, is an innovative technique that allows the easy production of structural members. This paper presents an experimental investigation on the performance of 15‐5 PH stainless steel square and circular hollow section tubular stub columns manufactured by selective laser melting (SLM). An initial investigation was conducted to identify appropriate process parameters for the fabrication of the 15‐5 PH stainless steel specimens. Material properties of coupon specimens extracted from the printed stub columns using three different scanning strategies were examined through tensile coupon tests. The initial local geometric imperfections of the stub column test specimens were measured. In addition, a total of thirteen tubular stub column specimens were tested under axial compression. The ultimate loads, load‐axial shortening curves and failure modes were obtained for all the square and circular hollow section specimens. It should be noted that among the three scanning strategies adopted in this investigation, the scanning strategy S2 resulted in higher ultimate strengths of the SLM‐fabricated 15‐5 PH stainless steel tubular stub columns compared to those printed using the scanning strategies S1 and S3. Furthermore, the ultimate loads of thirteen stub column specimens were used to assess the applicability of European Code to additively manufactured stainless steel tubular stub columns.