Hello all,
I am curious as to why RAM Connection is not checking local flange yielding at a directly welded beam-to-column-flange moment connection. A full-penetration weld is graphically shown, but it does not perform any calculations for yielding of the flange where the member is coped to include backing bar. Any help or insight on this issue is greatly appreciated.
Thank you.
- Mike
Is your concern that the compression flange of the beam might buckle (before the weld fails) and this could be the limiting capacity for the joint?
Our main concern is failure of the beam tension flange at the weld. As EOR, we specified this particular W18x46 moment connection be designed for 262 k-ft (LRFD). This is 77% of phi*Mp. The fabricator's engineer is saying they can only achieve 235 k-ft with a directly welded connection (flange plates are not on the table due to cost implications), and the beam flanges are the limiting factor. They are taking the full penetration weld design strength as 0.9*Fy*b*tf for the W18x46 flange (Fy = 50 ksi for the flange itself). Multiplying this by the beam depth, they are coming up with about 235 k-ft.
I wanted to quickly check their claims by modelling in RAM Connection, but noticed that RAM Connection does not include this calculation for local failure of the beam flange at the weld.
It seems like a pretty simple check to perform. I log a request to add it. The compression would be a little bit harder because the unbraced length of the flange due to the cutout s unknown (the cutout is drawn at an arbitrary small dimension now).
Agreed, the tension is definitely a quick check. I was just curious if there was a reason these checks weren't included in the Connection software. Thank you very much for your help and quick responses!