For design of shell structures significant difference between stainless steels and mild steels exists in the nonlinear range of stress-strain curves of stainless steels before reaching the yield strength f_y.

The nonlinearity of stainless steels can lead to a reduced buckling load capacity of stainless shells with middle slenderness. In the design according to EN 1993-1-6 it can be considered by replacing the real Young's modulus E by reduced Young's modulus E_sek. However, this method also reduces the buckling capacity of shells that fail outside the critical range of stress-strain curves of stainless steels and do not require any additional reduction compared to mild steels. 

For this reason, Schmidt and Hautala developed the additional temperature and slenderness dependent correction factors for the design of axially compressed cylindrical shells made of stainless austenitic steels. This represented an alternative to the use of a reduced Young´s modulus and were also published in „Buckling of Steel Shells - European Design Recommendations“ from Rotter und Schmidt.

Nevertheless, the additional correction factors according to Schmidt and Hautala cannot be used for the design of stainless ferritic and duplex steels due to differing stress-strain curves.

The aim of this work is to check the transferability of the existing additional correction factors for axially compressed shells made of stainless austenitic steels according to Schmidt and Hautala to stainless ferritic and duplex steels based on experimental and numerical investigations.

Furthermore, the integration of additional correction factors for shells made of stainless steels into the parameter-based design method of EN 1993-1-6 will be investigated.