A Composite Bolted Joints Non-Linear Stiffness Model and its Application

Abstract

The paper presents a nonlinear stiffness model on the bearing damage and bolt-load distribution rule of composite bolted joints. Based on the experimental stress-strain curves of composite single-bolted joints, the bearing damage process of structures can be divided into:linear non-damage stage; nonlinear damage propagation stage and linear degeneration stage. In this paper, the composite bolted joints are represented by a system of springs in which the static friction effects between laminates are considered in the linear stage, the non-linear interlaminate shear behavior and the nonlinear damage function for composite are defined and failure behavior based on the energy abortion principle is simulated in the linear degeneration stage. At last, the multi-fasters spring model is analyzed by importing the single-faster spring model.Comparing with the experimental data of multi-fasters shows the numerical result is in good agreement with experimental curves and has little error on the bolt-load distribution, which satisfies to the requirements in the engineering.