Buckling behavior of non-retrofitted and FRP-retrofitted steel CHS T-joints

This paper aims to investigate the buckling behavior of circular hollow section (CHS) Tjoints in retrofitted and non-retrofitted states under axial brace compressive loading. For this purpose, two types of analysis are carried out. The first one is evaluating the critical buckling load in various tubular joints, and the other one is investigating the post-buckling behavior after each buckling mode. More than 180 CHS T-joints with various normalized geometric properties were numerically modeled in non-retrofitted state to compute their governing buckling mode, i.e., chord ovalization, brace local, or global buckling. Then three joints with different buckling modes were selected to be retrofitted by fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) patches to illustrate the improving effect of the FRP wrapping on the post-buckling performance of the retrofitted joints. In addition, FRP composite failures were investigated. The results indicate that the FRP retrofitting is able to prevent the brace local buckling, and that matrix failure is the most common composite failure in the retrofitted joints.