It is well known that the cold-forming process used to manufacture tubes causes an increase in both the yielding stress and the ultimate strength of the corner material in rectangular steel hollow sections. This may have a significant effect on the resistance of any structure built with those profiles. However, the mentioned material hardening can be difficult to take into account in the calculations for member design or to evaluate the connection resistance through the design formulation or when using numerical simulation models. As an attempt to face the above-mentioned problem, the present paper presents a comparison among simplified approaches that consider homogeneous material properties for the whole section. It has been carried out by comparing the results obtained from the finite element modelling of stub column tests in which the material properties based on the flat faces were considered for the whole profile.
Keywords: FEM; cold-formed; hollow sections; material characterization; stub-column.