Experimental investigation of cold-formed stainless steel tubular T-joints

This paper describes a test program on a wide range of cold-formed stainless steel welded tubular T-joints fabricated from square and rectangular hollow section brace and chord members. A total of 22 tests was performed. High strength stainless steel (duplex and high strength austenitic) and normal strength stainless steel (AISI 304) specimens were tested. The tests were performed by supporting the chord member of the specimen along its entire length with the pure concentrated force applied to the chord face by the brace member. The ratio of brace width to chord width (β) of the specimens varied from 0.5 to 1.0 so that failure modes of chord face failure and chord side wall failure were observed. The test results were compared with the design procedures in the Australian/New Zealand Standard for stainless steel structures, CIDECT and Eurocode design rules for carbon steel structures. It is shown that the design strengths predicted by the current design specifications are conservative for the test specimens calculated using the 0.1%, 0.2%, 0.5% and 1.0% proof stresses as the yield stresses. The 0.2% proof stress is comparatively more reasonable to predict the design strengths of stainless steel welded tubular T-joints for both ultimate limit state and serviceability limit state. In this study, it is shown that the ultimate limit state controls rather than the serviceability limit state for most of the test specimens.