Keywords: cold-formed steel angle columns, equal-leg angles, fixed-ended and pin-ended columns, buckling behaviour, post-buckling behaviour, ultimate strength, direct strength method..

This paper presents an integrated perspective of the most recent findings concerning the non-linear behaviour and direct strength method-based design of centrally loaded thin-walled steel equal-leg angle columns. After presenting a few numerical results concerning the buckling and post-buckling behaviour of these columns, the paper addresses the key behavioural features exhibited by the angle column structural response and pays special attention to the novel ideas behind the rational design approach that has just been developed, one for fixed-ended columns and the other for pin-ended angle columns. Both procedures are based on the direct strength method (DSM) and, since those columns fail mostly in interactive modes combining flexural and flexural-torsional features, the strength curves involved are (i) the current DSM global curve and (ii) various flexural-torsional strength curves, which replace the single local strength curve in the current DSM design against localglobal interactive failures - the effective centroid shift effects, which strongly influence the pin-ended column ultimate strength, are also incorporated into the pinended design approach. It is shown that the two proposed DSM-based approaches lead to accurate ultimate strength estimates for short-to-intermediate angle columns covering wide slenderness ranges.

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