Compression Response of Additive Manufactured AlSi10Mg Square and Rectangular Hollow Sections

Abstract The current trend towards a more efficient and sustainable construction industry and the growing significance of digital engineering has led to increased interest in additive manufacturing (AM) from both practicing engineers and researchers. This paper reports experimental tests on square and rectangular hollow sections (SHS/RHS) made from AlSi10Mg alloy and manufactured using selective laser melting (SLM), a sub‐technology within the family of powder bed fusion (PBF) manufacturing processes. Material properties of samples printed in three different orientations, namely 0°, 45°, and 90°, as well as local geometric imperfection measurements are also reported. The tested AlSi10Mg cross‐sections cover a wide range of cross‐sectional slenderness thus allowing the applicability of the local buckling design guidelines specified in EN 1999‐1‐1 for additive manufactured AlSi10Mg sections to be evaluated. The codified slenderness limit for Class 3 internal elements in compression is shown to be overly conservative whilst the effective thickness equation is also shown to significantly underestimate the compressive response obtained through testing. The continuous strength method was shown to provide more accurate ultimate capacity predictions due to its ability to rationally account for strain‐hardening in stocky sections.