I'm planning on building a home climbing wall, made from a mild steel subframe. It will probably be around 10 feet tall approx.
I was thinking along the lines of using mild steel angle, cutting to size, drilling bolt holes then joining the peices together.
Like this:
Does anyone have any idea as to the strength of such joints compared to welding?
Also, the wall will be freestanding, not attached to an existing wall so I'll need to lay some foundations, for this I was hoping to get away with a concrete base with bolt holes alligned to accept the sub frame being bolted straight to it. This would allow me to remove the wall and not leave a big RSJ poking out of my garden or some other such thing.
So my other question is, would such a foundation be acceptable? Is their other longer fixings availiable that could take the place of using bolts?
Best Answer
A welded connection can always be made the same strength as the original steel by using a full penetration but weld but this all depends on the quality of the materials used for the welding and the quality of the welding itself. Therei s a very good reason why there is a lot of non destructive testing used when welded joints are being used for structural reasons. Other types of welds such as fillet welds will be weaker than the origianl material with the strength depending on the quality and the design.
For a bolted connection, the connection will not normally be as strong as the original material without some form of strengthening because of issues like the reduction in area caused by drilling the holes and the small lever arms caused by overlapping plates.
In this instance, if you are not intending to get the design professionally done, I would suggest a bolted connection would be more suitable unless you have absolute confidence on the quality of the welding and the design of the joints. A simple bolted connection should give you more confidence about the strength than a welded joint even though the capacity of the connection may be lower.