Changing bolt arrangement and their effect on bearing capacity of single shear connections

Abstract

In steel structures, bolted joints are used to connect structural elements. Due to the ease of its making, the square and rectangle arrangement of bolts are the prevalent pattern in these structural joints. To investigate the effect of changing the arrangement of bolts on the bearing capacity of single shear joint, square, circular and diamond are the patterns of bolts that have been chosen in this study. Nine specimens represent all these configurations experimentally have been tested under tension load. The results indicated that the highest bearing capacity of a single shear connection could be achieved using a square arrangement of bolts. While stresses could not be equally distributed around holes in circular and diamond pattern specimens of the same connection.