Experimental determmination of (stiffened) screwed beam to column connection behavior in cold formed steel structures

One of the developments in the field of structural steel in recent years is the introduction of cold-formed steel profiles in frame systems extensively.While nuts or welded joints are used in normal steel structures, many types of joints are used in cold formed steel structures such as screws, bolts, rivets, welds, rosette joints and rack joints. Among these, only shear tests were conducted on screw joints. In light steel constructions, bulbous joints are used more in beam-column joints.When the literature is examined, it is predicted that screwed beam-column joints will yield more economical results than bolted beam-column joints because the material deforms first in cold-formed steel structures, which are quite light compared to rolling profiles.In light steel beam-column joints, the combinations were experimentally investigated to observe the influence of the use of smart screws on the joint behavior. Full-scale console tests of the combination have been carried out for different thicknesses of beam and through platein order to determine the structural behavior of the combination of light steel structures by using stiffening in the web of beam. Since the behavior of the couplings is represented by the moment-rotation curve, this study focused on the evaluation of the moment-rotation curves and the moment-rotation characteristics. Failure modes of the connections were also specified. The results of the experiment show that using stiffeners retards the failure and increases the stiffness and ultimate moments. Besides, the increase in the beam thickness and the through platethickness changed the stiffness and failure behavior.