Experimental investigation on longitudinal residual stresses for cold-formed thick-walled square hollow sections

This paper presents the experimental study on cold-formed thick-walled square hollow sections with thickness greater than 6 mm. Square hollow sections are formed using two different forming processes of a “direct square” way and an “indirect way from circular to square”. Two test methods of the hole-drilling method and the X-ray diffraction method are used to measure the magnitudes and distributions of longitudinal residual stresses. The magnitudes and distributions of longitudinal residual stresses along the section perimeter as well as along the section thickness are obtained in this study. It is shown that the longitudinal residual stresses are in tension at outer surface and in compression at inner surface, and present nonlinear distributions, which seems like “sine” curve along the section thickness. Furthermore, the effects of forming process and cross-section geometry on the magnitudes and distributions of longitudinal residual stresses for cold-formed thick-walled square hollow sections are discussed. At last, two distribution patterns have been proposed for the square hollow sections formed using two different forming processes, respectively.