Tests of cold-formed high strength steel tubular T-joints

The paper presents an experimental investigation on cold-formed high strength steel tubular T-joints. The fabricated T-joints include brace members made up of square, rectangular and circular hollow sections, while chord members were made up of square and rectangular hollow sections. The nominal yield strengths of square and rectangular tubular members were 900 and 960 MPa, while the nominal yield strength of circular tubular members was 900 MPa. Two configurations of tubular joints were fabricated, first, where both brace and chord members were made up of square and rectangular hollow sections, and second, where circular hollow section braces were welded to square and rectangular hollow section chord members. The brace and chord members were joined together by automatic gas metal arc welding process. In total, 24 tubular T-joint tests were conducted where an axial compression was applied through the brace members of the T-joints, while the ends of the chord members were supported on rollers. The ratios of brace-to-chord width (beta) ranged from 0.34 to 1, brace-to-chord thickness (tau) ranged from 0.52 to 1.27 and chord width-to-chord thickness (2 gamma) ranged from 20.63 to 38.55. The resistances and deformations of tubular T-joints were carefully examined. In order to evaluate the applicability of the existing design provisions for high strength steel tubular T-joints, test results were compared with the nominal strengths obtained from the Eurocode 3 (EC3) and CIDECT. It is shown that the existing design provisions are not capable of providing accurate and reliable predictions for the design of cold-formed high strength steel tubular T-joints made up of 5900 and 5960 steel grades.