Experimental and numerical studies on stress concentration factors of high strength steel fabricated box X-joints

High strength steel (HSS) is commonly available in the form of steel plates. The built-up box tube with sharp corners which is welded from four steel plates is usually fabricated for construction. The stress concentration factor (SCF) is crucial for the determination of the hot spot stress range which governs the high-cycle fatigue resistance of tubular joints. This paper presents experimental and finite element (FE) investigations on the SCF of HSS fabricated box X-joints. Four X-joints which are fabricated from built-up box tubes with a nominal yield stress of 890 MPa are tested under brace axial compression. The SCFs at typical hot spot locations are obtained using strip strain gauges. A FE model which has been validated against the test results is employed to conduct the parametric study on totally 112 fabricated box X-joints. The loading cases of brace and chord axial loading are covered. The effects of brace to chord width ratio, chord width to wall thickness ratio and brace to chord wall thickness ratio on the SCFs at the hot spot locations are revealed. The CIDECT SCF formulae are shown to be not suitable for the fabricated box X-joints under brace and chord axial loading. More accurate SCF equations are proposed to calculate the SCFs at the hot spot locations of the box X-joints.