Novel steel connection for modular houses in indigenous communities: An experimental study

Abstract

Remote Indigenous communities across Canada are facing housing shortages and the need for major repairs, which resulted from engineering challenges that obstructed the construction phases. Prefabricated steel moment-resisting frame modular houses are currently utilized as alternatives to typical conventical houses because of their technical advantages, such as better-quality control, lightweight structures, and ease of transportation to remote and rural regions. To explore the potential use of hollow structural sections (HSS) in panelized steel modular structures, this study presents a novel steel-bolted connection for connecting HSS beams to HSS columns using high-strength long bolts, indicating that the connections can be easily installed without requiring skilled workers and heavy machinery. Six specimens were fabricated and tested under monotonic load with a Digital Image correlation (DIC) camera to capture full-field 3D displacement and deformation until failure accurately. The impact of different geometric parameters such as bolt arrangement, extended plate thickness, number of bolts, and the existence of stiffener on the mechanical performance of the joint, stiffness, inelastic rotation, ductility, and failure modes were analyzed. Bolt arrangement with an aspect ratio of 1:1 was found to increase the connection capacity, initial stiffness, and ductility by 7%, 216%, and 26%, respectively. The yielding and rotation of the extended plate were eliminated using a stiffener. Increasing the number of bolts triggered the connection's ability to gain more capacity at earlier stages and reduced joint rotation by 60%.