Bearing behaviour of lap joints to thin-walled steel plates at ambient and elevated temperatures

This thesis presents the results of a comprehensive research study of the bearing behaviour of single or multiple bolted plates in bolt shear at ambient and elevated temperatures. A total of 18 tests were carried out to provide detailed experimental information on bearing behaviour of plates with single bolt. A series of parametric studies using the commercial finite element package ABAQUS were conducted to investigate the effects of different design parameters on the connected plate bearing behaviour, including initial stiffness, ultimate resistance and deformation at the ultimate resistance. The finite element models were verified by comparing the simulated results against the author?s tests conducted as part of this research and other researchers? test results. Based on the parametric study results, an analytical model was proposed to predict the bearing load-deformation relationship of bolted plate in bolt shear. It was found that the stiffness and ultimate resistance could be predicted accurately by using existing methods. The main contribution of the analytical study was the development of a simple method to calculate the maximum plate deformation (bolt-hole elongation) at the ultimate resistance, based on proposed strain distributions according to different failure modes. This method has been verified against the parametric study results and has been found to be suitable for ambient and elevated temperature applications.