High-strength steel: ultimate material or expensive alternative?: Feasibility and optimization of using high-strength structural steel in offshore topsides

Steel is a widely used material in construction because of its availability, high strength-to-weight ratio, and recyclability. However, steel manufacturing consumes a lot of energy, and there is an increasing demand for more environmentally friendly building materials. Consequently, high-strength steel is becoming more popular as it reduces the...

Mechanical behaviour of welded high strength steel rectangular hollow section joints

The material reduction factor of rectangular hollow section (RHS) joints in a new version of Eurocode 3 part 1–8 is validate for steel with the nominal yield strength up to 700 MPa. In this paper, finite element simulations of gap K-joints are conducted to investigate effects of material properties, gap size of the joint, the brace to chord...

Inexpensive Fracture Toughness Testing of Welded Steel

In a prior project, TNO has presented a low-cost way of finding fracture toughness of base materials for cleavage fracture. That method features a small-scale CTOD specimen, combined with simplified sensors, less fatigue pre-cracking, faster testing, and no need for a temperature chamber. This method has been extended to welds by considering...

Secondary Bending Stresses in High-Strength Hollow Section Joints

The interest in high strength steel (HSS) shows an increasing trend mainly due to its high yield strength, low weight to strength ratio, decreasing costs of the base material and fabrication. The proposed 2020 version of the Eurocode 3 part 1-8, still under discussion at the time of writing of this thesis, covers steel with yield strength up to...