Recent contributions on the effect of local damages on the behavior of circular steel hollow sections

Despite many papers on the structural response of thin circular sections, the effect of large imperfections – largely imposed due to damage, collisions, etc. – still leaves many open questions. Over the past few years however, there has been a significant body of tests on steel members with large imperfections, conducted by the authors at the University of Tasmania, with a particular focus on circular hollow sections under different loading conditions. The effect of geometrical irregularities of such structures was examined and subsequently presented in several papers. This paper incorporates these new advances into an organized summary, including key findings of the mentioned experimental data on the effect of local damages on the capacity of different structures with various geometrical features. Discussions are presented on the topic and some general recommendations made in relation to real structures in practice.