Circular steel tube members with the absence of anticorrosive protection or coating failure are prone to uniform corrosion, which threatens the reliability and safety of members in the atmospheric environment. To fully study the mechanical behavior of uniformly corroded circular steel tubes, compression test and theoretical analysis were conducted, and two methods considering section reduction and material degradation, respectively, were adopted for the calculation of ultimate load carrying capacities of specimens. The results indicate that uniform corrosion did not change the failure modes of specimens, and all of them belonged to global buckling failure. The load carrying capacities and stiffness of specimens decreased with the increase of corrosion ratio, and the degree of reduction was greater than that of material degradation, showing a linear relationship with the corrosion rate. Under the same corrosion ratio, the specimens with larger eccentricity represented more obvious load carrying capacity and stiffness degradation. The load carrying capacities predicted by both methods were in good agreement with the test results and had a certain safety margin. The conservative degree of calculation results from three specifications followed a descending order of ANSI/AISC 360-16, GB 50017-2017, and EN 1993-1-1. Under the same corrosion ratio, the load carrying capacity variation of specimens between one-sided corrosion and two-sided corrosion was less than 3%.

The bolted T-stub connection joining beam with column is being widely applied. To enhance the energy dissipation capacity of conventional T-stub connections, two rectangular plates are proposed to be inserted between the T-stub and column, so that the T-stub flange can yield both under tensile and compressive loads. This study put forward a mechanical model of a new T-stub connection with inserted plates and investigated important factors that could affect its mechanical behavior through experimental tests. Thirty specimens were designed with different configurations that differed according to the existence or absence of inserted plates, the fabrication method and the width of inserted plates. These configurations were tested under axial and cyclic loading conditions, and results showed that the proposal aiming to improve the energy dissipation capacity was feasible. The mechanical model presented coincided with the test observation and data. The advent of two inserted plates elevated the load bearing capacity, stiffness and ductility of connections under compression, whereas in tension the properties were not substantially enhanced. The welded T-stub connections outperformed those cut from standard section steel. The energy dissipated by connections with inserted plates was about 150% of that by traditional connections without inserted plates. Only within a reasonable range can the increment of plate width promote the energy dissipation capacity of T-stub connections. The optimum width of plates in terms of energy consumption accounted for around 31% of the overall width of connections.

Grouted connections are commonly used in marine engineering, especially on oil platforms, cross-sea bridges, and offshore wind power turbines. The prediction methods for axial carrying capacity of grouted connections with shear keys and their application ranges in current codes were analyzed in this paper. The calculated results by using different codes were compared based on a practical grouted connection between steel piles and the jacket foundation of a wind turbine. The research team conducted axial compression tests on seven specimens, collected a wide range of experimental results to establish a database, and finally compared the standard calculation results with the experimental results. The study indicates that the axial strength of grouted connections predicted by different methods is distinct. The calculation formula of the British Health and Safety Executive (HSE, 2002) has obvious limitations; specifically, with increased shear keys, strength is overestimated, resulting in insecure design outcome of structures. The results calculated by the Norwegian Det Norske Veritas (DNV, 2013) are generally consistent with the experimental results, in which the reduction effect of multiple shear keys was considered. The prediction method of the American Petroleum Institute (API, 2007), which undervalues the bearing performance of connections, is excessively conservative. The method of the combined Norwegian and German Det Norske Veritas–Germanischer Lloyd (DNV-GL, 2016) has wider applicability and is safe, reliable, and economical.

In order to achieve a comprehensive and accurate evaluation of the safety of compression members made of circular steel tubes, image processing technology is commonly utilized to extract the morphology of the steel tubes before and after rust removal. The obtained results have validated the feasibility and applicability of employing digital cameras and image processing technology to analyze the images of the steel tubes before and after rust removal and to extract useful structural mechanics features. The feature values of the apparent morphology before rust removal grow with the increase of the corrosion depth, while after rust removal, the feature values first increase and then decrease with the growth of the corrosion depth. Based on this fact, a simplified equation is proposed to quantify the relationship between the feature values of the apparent morphology before and after rust removal and the corrosion depth. In continuing, a simple, fairly accurate, and comprehensive safety evaluation methodology for corroded circular steel tubes under compression is established. Finally, an example is illustrated to check the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed approach.