Compressive Behavior of Steel Members Reinforced by Patch Plate with Welding and Bonding

Repair and reinformcement of aged civil steel structures is one of the important issues for maintaining and using them for a long term. For repair and reinforcement of deteriorated civil steel structures due to fatigue and corrosion, patch plate reinforcement is widely applied. Bolting is generally used because of easy quality control and many construction achievements. However, bolting has downsides including holes made and weight increase. Welding is considered to overcome these demerits but in reality the application of welding is unsatisfactory due to the possibility of fatigue crack occurring from the welded part. In this study, a patch plate strengthening system of welded joint assisted with bonding has been proposed. The compressive behaviors of weld-bond jointed specimen were investigated by a series of experiments and FE analysis. It was confirmed that use of welding and bonding was effective to enhance compressive strength of specimen, due to better load-carrying capacity of patch plate compared with sole use of welding.