Study of design methodologies of steel column bases

Abstract The behavior of a steel structure is directly related to the type of base used in the columns, which is essential to the stability and security of the structural system. The Brazilian standard ABNT NBR 8800:2008 does not directly covers this subject. Another Brazilian standard, ABNT NBR 16239:2013, presents a limited design procedure to hollow columns. In this paper, two design methodologies are presented considering the uniform and triangular pressure distribution between the base plate and the concrete surface. A computational program has been developed to design steel column bases considering both methodologies mentioned. The program has been validated with manually solved design examples and conclusions about the pressure distribution design procedures were made from the 200 bases designed by the program. It was noted that, for the triangular pressure distribution, there is an interval in which the procedure is not completely applicable. Apart from this interval, there was no significant difference in the results.