The effective crushing distance in axially compressed thin-walled metal columns

This paper examines the effective crushing distance of thin-walled box columns. In contrast to previous work on this subject where a perfectly plastic material was assumed, the hardening property of a material is now taken into account. A simplified theoretical model of a compressed rigid-linearly strain hardening metal strip is studied and a closed-form solution is derived for the crushing distance of unstiffened as well as transversly stiffened box columns. The theoretical predictions are in excellent agreement with experimental data.