Seismic-resistant cast steel structural connectors for circular HSS (CHS) steel braces were developed at the University of Toronto (de Oliveira et al. 2006, 2008a, 2008b). The technology has since been licensed to Cast Connex Corporation, which now markets the Connectors under its High-Strength Connector product line.
This report describes a cyclic test program that was conducted on four brace specimens to evaluate the performance of the brace connectors for bracing members of typical lengths with boundary conditions representative of typical field conditions. The braces were fabricated with the heaviest walled circular tubing conforming to ASTM A500 Grade C (ASTM 2007) or equivalent for each brace size. The brace sizes tested were HSS 102x8.0 (HSS 4.000x0.313), HSS 141x9.5 (HSS 5.563x0.375), HSS 168x13 (HSS 6.625x0.500), and HSS 219x16 (HSS 8.625x0.625).
