Experimental behaviour and fracture prediction of austenitic stainless steel bolts under combined tension and shear

Abstract

This paper describes an experimental programme and numerical studies on the behaviour of austenitic stainless steel bolts under combined tensile and shear loading. Extensive experimental tests under tension, shear and combined loading were conducted for A4–70 and A4–80 austenitic stainless steel bolts, as well as grade 8.8 carbon steel bolts for comparison purposes. From the test results, the austenitic stainless steel bolts showed unique behaviour such as much higher ductility and specific failure mode compared with conventional carbon steel bolts. The predictions of existing design provisions (especially the AISC codes) for stainless steel bolts under combined loading were found to be unsafe in some circumstances. Moreover, in order to establish a complete framework for fracture prediction of stainless steel bolts, finite element models were developed, incorporating a fracture model calibrated by the bolt test results. To illustrate the performance and applications of the developed method, numerical examples of stainless steel bolted connections were carried out. It was found that the proposed method could reasonably predict the fracture behaviour of stainless steel bolts under tension and shear.