Tubular K-Joint under in-Plane Bending

Iberahin Jusoh

Abstract: Structural member that contains a discontinuity, will experience localized stresses near the discontinuity. Such discontinuities are called stress raisers and the regions in which they occur are called areas of stress concentration. In this study the effect of loading on variation of Stress Concentration Factor (SCF) for different brace-to-chord diameter ratio, b and brace-to-chord thickness ratio, t for a simple tubular gap K-joint are investigated. Case study IPB1 is for in-plane bending load acting on brace B of the model while Case study IPB2 is for in-plane bending loads acting simultaneously on braces B and A. Results shows that the highest value of SCF occurred when the brace-to-chord thickness ratio t= 0.7 and brace-to-chord diameter ratio, b= 0.9 with a magnitude of 1.8526. This is an increment of 24.36 % for the same loading parameter on K-joint with t= 0.7.

Keywords: tubular K-joint, structural modelling, in-plane bending, SCF analysis