SteelMember designConnection designVerificationsBuckling

Braces with Single-sided Gusset Plates Connections

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Unfortunately, single-sided gusset plate connections of compressed members are often poorly designed, resulting in failure. GMNIA proves to be an effective tool in engineer's toolkit. Comparison to dozens of experiments and numerical simulations proves the usefulness of IDEA StatiCa Member.

The report provides a workflow in IDEA StatiCa Member and compares the results to dozens of physical experiments to evaluate the feasibility, precision, and safety of this workflow.

First, the models created in Abaqus with the same imperfection amplitudes are compared to prove that IDEA StatiCa Member and Abaqus provide nearly identical results. Then, the proposed workflow of design of a submodel consisting of a compressed member and its two single-sided gusset plate connections is described. Geometrically and materially nonlinear analysis with imperfections (GMNIA) is used and the selection of imperfections plays a major role. A total of four analyses should be performed with two imperfection shapes: (i) symmetrical global mode of the member, (ii) asymmetrical mode of gusset plates, and two imperfection amplitudes: (i) with a plus sign, (ii) with a minus sign.

	Limit column imperfection	Limit gusset plate imperfection
Maximum	$e_{c,max} = \alpha L_c / 150$	$e_{g,max} = L_g/50$
Minimum	$e_{c,min}=L_c/1000$	$e_{g,min}=L_g/100$

Three sets of experiments and an additional numerical simulation from the literature are used to determine the precision and safety of the proposed workflow.

Highlights:

$Recommendation for a choice of imperfection shapes and amplitudes for a submodel consisting of compressed member with its single-sided gusset plate connection is provided.$
$Safety and ease of use are preferred and a flowchart is given.$

Conclusions:

$IDEA StatiCa Member provides very similar results to Abaqus (\pm3% difference at most).$
$Geometrically and materially nonlinear analysis with imperfections (GMNIA) provides safe-sided load-resistance predictions with the proposed workflow. For dozens of experiments, at most 2% overestimation was achieved.$