Thin-walled structural hollow section joints

Several national design standards allow the use of hollow sections with minimum nominal wall thicknesses down to 1.5 mm. However, the international standards that will be used in the future, based on the work of the International Institute of Welding (IIW-XV-E), still prescribe a minimum thickness of 2.5 mm. This paper presents the background to the IIW-XV-E higher thickness limit and presents strong arguments for extending the scope of these international standards to include structural hollow sections with wall thicknesses down to 1.5 mm.