Stiffening of bolted end-plate connections with steel member assemblies

• A new stiffening method is proposed for bolted end-plate connections in which steel member assemblies of steel angles and plates are used as stiffeners.
• The local connection strengths are evaluated for the tensile and compressive part of end-plate connections.
• Three local tensile loading tests and one cyclic loading test are conducted.
• The test results reveal accuracy of the strength formulae and efficiency of the proposed stiffening method for bolted end-plate connections.

This paper presents a new stiffening method for bolted end-plate beam–column connections in which steel member assemblies of steel angles and plates are used as stiffeners. An important benefit of this method is that it can eliminate transverse stiffeners and doubler plates, thereby enabling use of the space between the column-flanges for architectural demands such as ducting. The local tensile strength was first evaluated based on the yield line theory. To examine failure behavior in the tension part of end-plate connections, three local tensile loading tests were conducted for the T-stub connection models. Then the local compressive strength was also evaluated by consideration of previous studies. Subsequently, to ascertain the stiffening method efficiency, one cyclic loading test was conducted for the real-size beam-to-column bolted end-plate connection. Accuracy of the strength formulae was demonstrated by comparing the predictions and the loading test results. The proposed method using the steel member assemblies was revealed to be effective to stiffen bolted end-plate connections.