Failure processes and study on verification methods for corner weld joint of steel pier due to out-of-plane bending

Abstract

Several corner weld failures of steel piers during large earthquakes have been attributed to the rupture of corner welds with unwelded section. First, both of tensile tests and finite element analysis of the corner weld model were conducted parametrically in order to clarify the fracture mechanism of corner welds. As a result of the study, a fracture process was observed in which the cracks firstly occurred in the inner corner welds and then in the outer welds. Next the simplified verification method for the corner weld was also investigated. As a result of the investigation, it was found that the approximate bending strength can be calculated without considering the effects of stress concentration. In the future, we plan to investigate structural models through experiments and finite element analysis.