Parametric study on SCFs of SHS-SHS T-joint connections under out-of-plane brace bending

Abstract

This paper presents a parametric study on welded tubular square hollow section (SHS) T-joint connections using ABAQUS finite element analysis (FEA) software. Sixty SHS-SHS T-joints were modelled and loaded under static out-plane brace bending. The purpose of the parametric study is to reveal the hot spots by determining the distribution of the stress concentration factors (SCFs) and therefore obtain the maximum SCF at the hot spot locations (lines A, B, C, D and E) of SHS-SHS T-joints. The parametric study focused on the effect of the non-dimensional parameters on the SCFs of the SHS-SHS T-joints. The range of the non-dimensional parameters is as follows: 0.25≤β≤1; 16.67≤2γ≤33.3 and 0.4≤τ≤1. Prior to the parametric study, six SHS-SHS T-joint models under out-of-plane bending were calibrated using experimental results which was carried out by Matti and Mashiri [1]. Comparable results of SCFs were obtained between the numerical and experimental investigations. The SCF results of the current parametric study were used to conduct multiple regression analysis for predicting a series of formulae for the determination of SCF in SHS T-joints under out-of-plane brace bending. There is a good agreement between the maximum SCFs in SHS T-joints calculated by experimental results, finite element (FE) results and predicted formulae. The results showed that the majority of the maximum SCF in SHS-SHS T-joint connections under out-of-plane bending generally occurred along lines A, B and C.