Tube wall deformation behaviour of tensile-loaded blind-bolted connections in octagonal hollow section tubes

The structural behaviour of octagonal hollow section (OctHS) tubes under lateral tensile loads applied through blind-bolted T-stubs were experimentally and numerically investigated in this study. Two series of T-stub connections – single-side and double-side bolted T-stub connections, were tested to investigate the influence of the tube geometry and boundary conditions on the failure modes, deformation, and strength. Finite element (FE) models were developed and validated against the test results. Based on the validated FE models, parametric studies were conducted to further assess the influence of width-to-thickness ratios, tube length-to-width ratios and boundary conditions on the tube deformation and strength. Furthermore, the applicability of the tube deformation of 3% of a tube width to be the ultimate state criterion for OctHS tubes was evaluated using tube-face component shell FE models. A simplified two-dimensional analytical model was developed, and the calculation equations were proposed based on either small deformation assumption or large deformation assumption. The comparison of the strengths obtained from the proposed equations, numerical simulations and tests demonstrated that the proposed equations are able to give reasonable predictions on the yield and ultimate strengths of blind-bolted OctHS tube connections under tensile loading.