Mechanical properties of stainless steel grades: AS/NZS 4673:2001 specifications Vs test results

In modern day construction stainless steel offers many advantages over ordinary carbon steel, most notably is its shinny surfacing and improved corrosion resistance. Many grades of commonly used stainless steel can also exhibit high degree of ductility and strain hardening prior to failure, making them the ideal material to use for many structural purposes. However its higher cost means such material should be more efficiently used as to ensure the amount of resource wasted is minimal.The current Australian code AS/NZS 4673:2001 for designing stainless steel structural members has included values such as Yield strength (0.2% Proof strength), Ultimate tensile strength, Initial modulus of elasticity, etc for some of the most common Grades of stainless steel. This project aims at validating these code values against the most recent experimental values and possibly suggests updates to ensure more efficient use of stainless steel in future structural designs.By using collected data obtained from various studies on stainless steel, it is observed that the mechanical property values given in the Australian code is generally overly conservative for both Yield strength and Ultimate tensile strength. Through clear analysis of collected experimental results, new values has been proposed by this paper which presents better estimates of the true capacity of stainless steel material. These new values when used will produce cost savings in material use while also maintaining acceptable levels of safety.With regard to future stainless steel designs, more time can be spent into collecting data on stainless steel lab testing results, especially on different types of sections such as I-beams and Angles. Once analyzed, these data can be combined with the findings in this paper to provide even more accurate values for future stainless steel member design.