ABSTRACT
This paper describes a test program on cold-formed stainless steel welded tubular X-joints fabricated from square hollow section (SHS) and rectangular hollow section (RHS) brace and chord members. Both high strength stainless steel (duplex and high strength austenitic) and normal strength stainless steel (AISI 304) specimens were tested. The ratio of brace width to chord width of the specimens (β) varied from 0.5 to 1.0 so that failure modes of chord face failure and chord side wall failure were observed. A total of 11 tests was performed. The test results are compared with the design procedures in the Australian/New Zealand Standard for stainless steel structures, CIDECT and Eurocode design rules for carbon steel tubular structures.
