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Behaviour of Ferritic Stainless Steel Bolted T‐stubs Under Tension‐Part 1: Experimental Investigations

Research on stainless steel structures has primarily focused on the structural response and design of individual members, whilst the response of joints has received far less attention to date. Recently, a series of experimental tests has been conducted on austenitic and duplex stainless steel moment resisting connections which highlighted both the excellent ductility and significant overstrength exhibited by such connections as well as the severe conservatism of current design rules specified in EN 1993‐1‐8 when applied to stainless steel joints. A comprehensive experimental study on the structural behaviour of stainless steel T‐stubs fabricated from EN 1.4003 ferritic stainless steel grade is reported in this paper. The tested configurations included both single and double bolt rows and have been assembled with A4‐80 stainless steel bolts. In order to determine the material characteristics of the T‐stubs and the connecting bolts, tensile coupon tests were performed and the material anisotropy exhibited by ferritic stainless steel has been quantified. The ultimate resistance, plastic deformation capacity and failure mode of each T‐stub were obtained and are reported herein. The obtained results are utilised to assess the accuracy of existing design rules and to validate the numerical model discussed in the companion paper.