Effect of hole deformation on bolt load transfer in hybrid-bonded/bolted joints

Abstract

As a new type of connection methodology, hybrid-bonded/bolted (HBB) connections exhibit potential advantages over mechanical or pure adhesive connections in construction, aerospace, shipbuilding, machinery, and other fields. The key to designing HBB joints is reasonable load sharing between bolts and adhesive layers. An accurate analytical model could effectively and quickly help engineers perform design iterations and arrive at reasonable load-sharing predictions. The existing models usually consider HBB joints as a simple superposition of adhesive and bolted joints. This paper found through experiments that when the HBB joint is subjected to tension, the bolt hole undergoes a certain deformation, resulting in a different bolt-hole contact state than pure bolt joints. Therefore, in the HBB joint, the load transferred by the bolt calculated using the existing model is usually higher than the actual situation. In response to this situation, this paper proposes a new calculation approach for bolt shear stiffness for this particular deformation and develops an analytical model for HBB joints. By comparing with the finite element method (FEM) results, it has been proven that this model can accurately calculate the load-displacement curves of HBB joints of different materials and sizes, as well as the load distribution between bolts and adhesive layers. This provides favorable references for the design of HBB joints.