Fatigue life assessment of welded joints made of circular hollow sections (CHS) with concrete filled (CF) chord member subject to vehicle load is vital in designing of CFCHS arch truss bridge. A key issue in fatigue life assessment of such joints is how to accurately estimate the stress intensity factor. This paper describes a methodology for calculating the stress intensity factor of the hot spot region in the welded CFCHS T-joints based on a finite element analysis which considers weld modeling, crack modeling and nonlinear interface element between steel and concrete. A procedure for fatigue life estimation of welded CFCHS T-joints is also established. Discussions are made on the effect of the initial crack size and concrete strength on fatigue life and hot spot stresses. The majority of crack propagation life is found to be associated with the shallow crack stage. The proposed method gives reasonable estimation of fatigue life of welded CFCHS T-joints.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

A series of tests on cold-formed steel square and rectangular hollow sections subjected to web crippling is reported in this paper. The web crippling tests were conducted under two loading conditions of end-two-flange (ETF) and interior-two-flange (ITF), which are specified in the current North American Specification for cold-formed steel structures. The concentrated load was applied by means of bearing plates, which act across the full flange width of the specimen sections. Different bearing lengths were investigated. The test specimens were fabricated by cold-rolling from steel sheet with nominal yield strength of 345MPa. The measured web slenderness values of the tubes ranged from 15.5 to 46.0. The test strengths obtained from this study are compared with the design strengths obtained using the current North American Specification, Australia Standard, European Code and Chinese Code for cold-formed steel structures. It is shown that the design strengths predicted by the specifications are either unreliable or too conservative.

No abstract

The initiation position can be predicted by studying on strain concentration factors (SNCF) and SNCF distributions. This paper concerns an experimental investigation of SNCF of welded T-joints composed of circular hollow section (CHS) braces and concrete-filled square hollow section (CFSHS) chords under axial loading on the braces with two load cases of tension and compression. Static experiments were performed on eight test specimens designed for considering different non-dimensional geometric parameters and C50 grade concrete. Compared with joints made of CHS-SHS, the experimental results indicate that the CHS-CFSHS T-joints have lower strain concentration factors which may increase fatigue strength. The position of the maximum SNCF is usually located at 00 or 900 of the intersection line between a CHS brace and a CFSHS chord.