Abstract
The purpose of this research was to investigate the effect of geometric variables on the bolt load distributions of a cold-formed steel bolt connection. The study was conducted using an experimental test, finite element analysis, and an analytical method. The experimental study was performed using single-lap shear testing of a concentrically loaded bolt connection fabricated from G550 cold-formed steel. Finite element analysis with shell elements was used to model the cold-formed steel plate while solid elements were used to model the bolt fastener for the purpose of studying the structural behavior of the bolt connections. Material nonlinearities, contact problems, and a geometric nonlinearity procedure were used to predict the failure behavior of the bolt connections. The analytical method was generated using the spring model. The bolt-plate interaction stiffness was newly proposed which was verified by the experiment and finite element model. It was applied to examine the effect of geometric variables on the single-column multibolt connection. The effects were studied of varying bolt diameter, plate thickness, and the plate thickness ratio (t2/t1) on the bolt load distribution. The results of the parametric study showed that thet2/t1ratio controlled the efficiency of the bolt load distribution more than the other parameters studied.
Highlights
A bolt connection is generally used in cold-formed steel structures
The failure behavior of a multibolt connection is considered in two steps as (a) the load distribution between bolts, which is the process for considering the stress bypass in the multibolt connection, and (b) local stresses analysis as the bearing stress and net-section stress around a critical hole, which is used to investigate ensuring a safety margin of connection [3,4,5]
The results show that the analytical method was in good correlation with the finite element analysis (FEA) and the experimental results
Summary
A bolt connection is generally used in cold-formed steel structures. It can result in a high-stress concentration at contact regions, especially with thin cold-formed steel members. The lap shear connection is used for tension in a structural member such as the diagonal and tension chord truss element It is designed using a multiple bolt connection with even bolt load distribution. The limitation of the coldformed ductility between the bolt-plate in bearing may be reached before the connection develops full plastic strength These failures result in a lower average bearing stress value per bolt hole of the multibolt connection. The equation of the bolt-plate interaction stiffness in industry today is derived by using a semiempirical approach based on the testing data [8,9,10] The weakness of these empirical equations is that they ignore the shear deformation assumption in the bolt component which is dominated by the short bolt length. The experimental investigation was performed using lap shear bolt connection testing and the connections were fabricated from cold-formed steel
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