Hysteretic behaviour of tubular joints under cyclic loading

This paper examines the cyclic performance of CHS joints used in steel tubular structures. Quasi-static experimental study into the response of eight TT-joint specimens is described. Four of them are subjected to cyclic axial load, and the other four are subjected to cyclic in-plane bending. The general test arrangement, specimen details, and most relevant results (failure modes and load-relative deformation hysteretical curves) are presented. Some indexes to assess the seismic performance of tubular joints, including strength, ductility and energy dissipation, are synthetically analyzed and compared. Test results show that failure modes of axially loaded joints mainly contain weld cracking in tension and chord plastification in compression. But for joints under cyclic in-plane bending, both punching shear and chord plastification become regular failure modes accompanied by ductile fracture of the welds. Hysteretic curves take on a plump form in general. Ultimate strengths of joints are also compared with equation values for monotonic loading from various design codes. Results indicate the strength at a certain deformation limit can be regarded as the ultimate strength of a TT-joint under cyclic loading and existing codes can be used to check it. It is also found that there is a significant distinction in the energy dissipation mechanism for tubular joints under different loading conditions. Finite element analyses are performed by taking into account weld geometry to facilitate the interpretation of the test results. It is identified that high tensile stress triaxiality can be one primary cause of weld cracking which happened under low cyclic load level.