Uncertainty assessment of field weld connections and the related effects on service life of steel buildings

Abstract

Delay in construction schedules has raised concerns regarding the quality of field weld connections. To address this issue, the effects of field weld quality are evaluated using test data and literature review. The evaluation provides evidence supporting the assumption that for the marginal workmanship quality, the strength of steel connections can reduce by approximately 5%. The effects are then used to predict the service life of 9-story and 20-story steel buildings with pre-Northridge connections. The prediction adopts a seismic risk-based framework, and considers the uncertainties of steel material and workmanship quality. The example buildings are highly vulnerable to earthquake damage owing to their lack of connection ductility. That also amplifies the effects of poor field weld quality. The result indicates that in the case of marginal quality workmanship, the service life can be reduced by 20 years, with taller buildings more significantly affected.

Keywords:

• Uncertainty assessment
• steel connections
• field weld
• workmanship quality
• seismic risk
• tall buildings
• service life

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of research fellow and technical staff from the National Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering, R.O.C., namely Ker-Chun Lin (experimental program) and Sheng-Jhih Jhuang (preparation of weld specimens).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Completion of the work was made possible through the financial support under Grant 104-2625-M-390-002 is gratefully acknowledged.