Bearing Strength of Stainless Steel Bolted Connections

Abstract

The present investigation studies the load bearing performance of stainless steel bolted connections. The austenitic stainless steel developed in China containing approximately 17% of Cr, which could be graded as EN 1.4401, has been selected for this research. In order to study the bearing strength of stainless steel bolted connections, experimental tests on 5 specimens have been conducted. In addition, complementary finite element (FE) models, which have been validated by the test results, have been adopted to analyse the effect of the key factors for bearing strength of the stainless steel bolted connections. The key factors include end distance, thickness of connecting plate, diameter of stainless steel bolt and edge distance. According to the FEA results, the loading capacity increases with the increase of the thickness of the plate and the diameter of the bolt approximate linearly. However, the end distance and edge distance have a comparatively complicated influence on the loading capacity of the connection. Based on mathematical analysis of the experimental and FEA results, a calculation method as well as its simplified form for the bearing strength of stainless steel bolted connections has been proposed.