Hysteretic behaviour of circular tubular T-joints with local chord reinforcement

When a welded circular hollow section (CHS) tubular joint is subjected to brace axial loading, failure position is located usually at the weld toe on the chord surface due to the weak flexural stiffness of the thin-walled chord. The failure mode is local yielding or buckling in most cases for a tubular joint subjected to axial load at the brace end. Especially when a cyclic axial load is applied, fracture failure at the weld toe may occur because both high stress concentration and welding residual stress along the brace/chord intersection cause the material in this region to become brittle. To improve the ductility as well as to increase the static strength, a tubular joint can be reinforced by increasing the chord thickness locally near the brace/chord intersection. Both experimental investigation and finite element analysis have been carried out to study the hysteretic behaviour of the reinforced tubular joint. In the experimental study, the hysteretic performance of two full-scale circular tubular T-joints subjected to cyclic load in the axial direction of the brace was investigated. The two specimens include a reinforced specimen by increasing the wall thickness of the chord locally at the brace/chord intersection and a corresponding un-reinforced specimen. The hysteretic loops are obtained from the measured load-displacement curves. Based on the hysteretic curves, it is found that the reinforced specimen is more ductile than the un-reinforced one because no fracture failure is observed after experiencing similar loading cycles. The area enclosed by the hysteretic curves of the reinforced specimen is much bigger, which shows that more energy can be dissipated by the reinforced specimen to indicate the advantage of the reinforcing method in resisting seismic action. Additionally, finite element analysis is carried out to study the effect of the thickness and the length of the reinforced chord segment on the hysteretic behaviour of CHS tubular T-joints. The optimized reinforcing method is recommended for design purposes.