New design approaches for tension, shear and interaction resistance of carbon steel bolts

Abstract

More economical and statistically verified design approaches for carbon steel bolts are presented based on an extensive literature review and own systematical experimental investigations into the tension, shear and interaction resistance of carbon steel bolts conducted at the Institute for Metal and Lightweight Structures of the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. Herein, reliability analyses according to EN 1990, Annex D were carried out and confirmed that an increase of the reduction factor to k2 = 1.0 for the tension resistance Ft,Rd is in principle possible. Regarding the shear resistance of carbon steel bolts, simplified but more economical shear coefficients a independent of the position of the shear plane are proposed. Finally, newly design equations for the interaction resistance of carbon steel bolts are proposed, which are in line with the new interaction formulations developed by Stranghöner/Abraham and implemented in prEN 1993–1-4 and abZ/abG Z-30.3-6 for stainless steel bolts. The new interaction concept provides a more economical design compared to EN 1993–1-8/prEN 1993–1-8 and serves to harmonise the European design rules between carbon and stainless steel.