Moment Capacity of Bolted-Side Plate for the Eaves Joint of Nested Tapered Box Beam Portal Frame

The joints of cold-formed steel (CFS) portal frames with box sections are primarily formed either through stiffened welded connections or by bolted end plates, which typically involve costly full penetration butt welds. In New Zealand, CFS portal frames with nested tapered box beam (NTBB) sections are popular, and the joints of these portal frames are also formed through a bolted end plate system. In literature, it was found that welds in these joints are prone to cracking in the heat-affected zone (HAZ) under bearing opening moments (tension). Therefore, this paper focuses on proposing an alternative connection system (bolted-side plate) for eaves joints without any weld, aiming to reduce the overall cost of construction and increase construction speed. The performance (strength and stiffness) of these joints is mainly dependent on the geometric details of the bolted-side plate, which is limited in Australia/New Zealand standards (AS/NZ 4600). Herein, a non-linear finite element (FE) model was developed for the NTBB portal frame and validated against the experimental test results from the literature. Firstly, the validated FE model was used to investigate the feasibility of using bolted-side plates for NTBB portal frames and found that the bolted-side plate can increase the ultimate capacity of NTBB portal frame by 9%. A parametric study was then conducted by considering different geometric details of the bolted-side plates under both closing (gravity) and opening (wind uplift) moments. Finally, unified design equations for the moment capacity of bolted-side plates were proposed based on the results of the parametric study, and their accuracy was assessed through reliability analysis.