Testing and design of wire-laser additively manufactured (WLAM) stainless steel angle section stub columns

Additive manufacturing, often known as 3D printing, is being increasingly adopted in structural engineering. This paper presents an experimental investigation on the compression resistances of wire-laser additively manufactured stainless steel angle section stub columns. A testing program was carried out, including four material tests and sixteen stub column tests. Both non-slender and slender angle section components were 3D-printed by means of wire-laser additive manufacturing and concentrically compressed for testing. Based on the test results, an in-depth design analysis was conducted to evaluate the suitability of the American, European and Chinese standards and the Continuous Strength Method for the design of wire-laser additively manufactured stainless steel angle section stub columns. The results from the design analysis indicate that the existing international design standards yield rather conservative compression resistance predictions for both non-slender and slender wire-laser additively manufactured stainless steel angle sections. It is also found that the Continuous Strength Method offers significantly improved overall design accuracy over the examined international design standards, mainly due to the rational consideration of the effect of material strain hardening.