Experimental investigation on the axial collapse of expanded metal tubes

Expanded metal sheeting is widely used around the world for catwalks, granting, and decorative purposes. In the literature, little information can be found regarding the behavior of structural elements made of expanded metal. This paper is aimed at studying the axial collapse of squared and round tubes made of expanded metal sheeting under compressive loading. When expanding the metal a diamond-like cell pattern is formed in the metal sheets, then these patterns are characterised by two geometrical axes. A set of experimental tests was conducted to investigate the influence of the angle formed between the major axis of the expanded metal and the compressive load. From the results, three types of collapse response were mainly observed depending on the orientation of the axes: (1) Mode 1 characterised by a plastic collapse mechanism; (2) Mode 2 local buckling of the individual cells; and (3) Mode 3 global buckling of the tube walls.