Deformation of stainless steel cables at elevated temperature

The deformation of stainless steel cables at elevated temperatures is an important consideration for the design of fire resistant pre-stressed spatial structures. In this paper, by conducting extensive experiments on a number of specimens, the thermal expansion under a stress-free state, the deformation under thermo-mechanical coupling state in transient heating stage, and the creep deformation in constant temperature stage of stainless cables subjected to elevated temperature were studied experimentally. A correlation for the thermal expansion coefficient of the stainless steel cables in the range of 30-600 degrees C was obtained. In addition, an equation relating the deformation of the cables and the temperature and initial stress under the thermo-mechanical coupling state in the heating stage was proposed. Furthermore, the relationship between the parameters of the Field & Field creep model and the temperature was derived for the stainless steel cables.