Structural joints will be essential for the transition of load-bearing building structures to carbon neutral and circular construction. The project will prepare and disseminate information on the prediction of its behaviour. The knowledge of the behaviour and modelling of contactors will focus on new materials that have the potential to reduce emissions and energy consumption, high strength steel. This will increase the competitiveness of steel structures and enable innovative applications driven by the European Green Deal action plan on the circular economy. Fundamental knowledge of structures is necessary to enable the design and construction of safe, reliable, and efficient infrastructure. Fundamental behavioural knowledge is distilled and implemented in design standards.raditionally, design standards rely on hand calculation-based approaches. While there are advantages to these simplified approaches, they limit accuracy and efficiency for the more complex cases commonly encountered by engineers today.

         Design by inelastic analysis is a new approach gaining acceptance in practice. In this method, relevant behavioural effects are simulated, avoiding the need for some of the prescriptive and restrictive design equations in current standards. This approach has been shown to provide accurate results over a wide range of cases. However, unconservative errors have been identified using the approach for connections with controlling limit states involving rupture. Rupture is currently detected in design by inelastic analysis using plastic strain limits. Plastic strains are affected by physical material and geometric properties as well as features of the analysis such as element type, mesh density, and constitutive relations. The combination of limits and analysis characteristics to optimally capture the true strength of a wide range of connections, including those with high-strength steel, and over a wide range of loading conditions, including under fire conditions, is unknown. Improved simulation capabilities are needed to better capture connection behaviour at the onset of rupture.

 

Principal strain in the entire strip 0.5 t₀ around the connected branch weld in the direction of the main tensile strain,
from Kožich, M. at al. The strain limit state criterion for hollow section joints, Steel Construction. 2022(15), 2-9. ISSN 1867-0520.

 

Partners

 

ČVUT Prague, VUT Brno, IDEA StatiCa s.r.o., The University of Tennessee Knoxville

 

Last change Jan 2023