Abstract: The new type nested steel tubular scaffold has advantage in safety，cost and convenience compared with traditional scaffolds，but its lack of theoretical research hinders its promotion and further application． Experimental research and finite element analysis of horizontal compressive loading cases under three different working conditions were carried out，with the joints of the new type nested steel tubular scaffold as the studying objects． The research shows that the experiment results and finite element simulation results are basically consistent． And along with the increasing of horizontal loading，the displacements of joints in all three cases increase linearly first，but later on they performs obvious nonlinearity as soon as the yield of joints appear． The failure modes of axial compression and biaxial asymmetric compression are bending failure and squashed section of standing tube． As for biaxial symmetri- cal compression，the failure mode is squashed section of standing tube and loose connection between wedge head of ledger and cruciform nested socket． Therefore，the compressive stiffness and compressive capacity of the joint de- pend on the loading method． On this basis，pressure resistance parameter of the joint was systematically analyzed． The result shows that the most influential factor is the length of standing tube，while the thicknesses of wedge head of ledger and cruciform nested socket have less influence． Thus the compressive stiffness model in term of the length of standing tube was presented．

Key words: scaffold, joint, compressive capacity, bearing test, finite element analysis