Structural performance of additive manufactured aluminum tubular stub columns

Aluminum is gaining more popularity in the construction industry due to its light weight, mechanical resistance and corrosion properties. Although several studies covering extruded and cold‐rolled aluminium members exist, research into the structural performance of 3D printed aluminium remains scarce. With the increasing importance of digital engineering in the construction industry and the transition from traditional to digital lean, it is important to investigate whether existing design codes are suitable to design 3D printed cross‐sections. To address this, the present paper reports experimental results on additive manufactured aluminium tubular sections subjected to compression. The sections were manufactured by selective laser melting (SLM) and were made of AlSi10Mg which is a hardenable aluminium based casting alloy. The tubular sections have different thicknesses to cover a wide range of slendernesses. Tests on similar extruded aluminium tubular sections are also reported for comparison. Tensile tests were conducted on material coupons printed in different orientations (0° and 90°) to assess the potential effect of the orientation of printing on the material response. Full load‐deformation responses using digital image correlation (DIC) are reported and key experimental results are used to assess the local buckling design provisions given in EN 1999‐1‐1 for application to additive manufactured aluminum tubes.