This work presents a study of welded T and KT gap joints, formed by a seamless hollow section with rectangular hollow chord sections and circular hollow sections for the members. The developed study considers theoretical and numerical analyses for the joints, experimental tests in full scale prototypes, and tests for residual stress in the rectangular hollow section. The experimental results were used in order to obtain the overall joint behavior, ultimate load, and collapse mode. The numerical analysis using finite elements methods involved the generation, testing and calibration of the experimental results. The model represents the behavior and load capacity of the tested joints. The numerical models considered or not the welding and geometric imperfections and the results were compared with the experimental data. The accomplished analyses present good correlation with the experimental results.
Steel structures; tubular structures; connections
