Partially sleeved joints between hollow sections using self‐drilling screws.

The present piece of research studies partial sleeve joints between similar rectangular tubes, involving bolts under shear as joining means. These are connections between two rectangular hollow sections that can be fitted one in another just by adequately cutting some faces and then bolting. For these elements, the use of self‐drilling screws is evaluated here. These connections could be removable and reusable in some cases, providing more sustainability. They also present semi‐rigid behaviour, which leads to weight saving structures and makes them ideal in many situations for structures like greenhouses or other light portal frames.

The structural joints following this typology can be planned as beam‐column, ridge, or even column‐base plate joints. This paper is focused on the initial experimental results of the first two cases under bending moments, comparing them with some simplified analytical assumptions for the strength and the stiffness. These calculations are based on eccentric bolted connections with in‐plane moments but considering some particularities of these joints and joining means (self‐drilling screws).