Debre markos university

Debre Markos Institute of Technology

School of Mechanical and Industrial Enginering

Technical writing and research methodology (Meng3102)

Material ductility and temperature effects on block shear capacity of

bolted connections laboratory report .

Name ID:NO

zelalem abeje --------------------------------------------1308478

Submission date:06/08/2016
Highlights
• Simultaneous tensile and shear ruptures mechanism
is possible if material ductility is low, contrary to existing belief.

• The strength of a connection failing by simultaneous tensile and

shear ruptures is determined using the yields stress.

• The block shear strength of a bolted connection in

ultra-high strength steel is determined using the shear yield stress.

• Finding that the catenary effect is very significant at elevated temperatures.

Abstract
The block shear equation in the current Australasian and amended North American cold-formed
steel design specifications is based on shear yielding without strain hardening, while that in the new
Aluminum Design Manual assumes full shear strain hardening. This study investigates the range of
applicability for both assumptions through experimental tests involving ultra-high strength steel
bolted connections at room (ambient) and elevated temperatures, where the levels of material
ductility are vastly different from each other. The experimental program has found that the block
shear capacities of the ultra-high strength steel bolted connections at room temperature can be
determined accurately by neglecting shear strain hardening, but full hardening can be assumed for
high strength and mild steel connections. Surprisingly, at temperatures above 300 °C, even the
assumption of full shear strain hardening for single-row bolted connections is too conservative, by
up to 50%. Finite element analysis is used to show that the catenary effect increases with increasing
temperature, as does the extent of shear strain hardening. Another finding is that a conventional
block shear failure may occur by simultaneous tensile and shear ruptures, if the material ductility is
low enough (rather than high enough as believed in the literature). Contrary to intuition, the block
shear capacity of a bolted connection failing by simultaneous tensile and shear ruptures has to be
computed using the shear yield stress rather than the shear ultimate stress.

Graphical abstract
1. Introduction
The block shear equation of bolted connections proposed by Teh & Clements [1] has been
incorporated in the Australasian cold-formed steel structures standard [2], and has been formally
approved for amendment to the North American cold-formed steel specification [3]. The equation
was derived based on the test results of specimens composed of cold-reduced sheet steel [4]. The
contribution of the shear component to the block shear resistance is determined using the shear
yield stress. Recently, Mai et al. [5] have confirmed that the Australasian and (upcoming) North
American code equation is significantly more accurate than the European equation [6] for the G450
sheet steel specimens they tested.

On the other hand, the Aluminum Design Manual 2020 [7] has adopted the block shear equation
proposed by Teh & Deierlein [8]. This equation was derived based on the results of hot-rolled steel
bolted connections tested by independent researchers around the world. Owing to the strain
hardening capability of the hot-rolled steel material, the shear resistance component is computed
using the shear ultimate stress. Interestingly, the equation has been found to be quite accurate for the
aluminium specimens tested by [9].

In both the cold-formed [1] and the hot-rolled [8] steel equations, the shear failure area is the
effective shear area, which is the mean between the gross and the net shear areas. These areas are
indicated in Fig. 1(a). In addition to verification against independent laboratory test results with
respect to the ultimate test load [8], the veracity of the effective shear area has been demonstrated
through extensive finite element analyses [[10], [11], [12], [13]] and Digital Image Correlation
technology [5]. The authors therefore consider the issue concerning the shear failure areas of a
bolted connection to be settled.

However, the range of applicability of the two block shear equations [1,8] remains uncertain. There
are now ultra-high strength steels such as Grade S1150 Docol 1400 M [14] that have extremely low
ductility, while at the other end of the spectrum austenitic stainless steels [15] are exceptionally
ductile as reflected in their very large elongation at fracture. Furthermore, when exposed to high
temperature, S1150 steel can have elongations at fracture ten times their original value. As will be
seen later, the resulting ductility is such that even the hot-rolled steel block shear equation
underestimates the ultimate test loads by about 50%.

The effects of material ductility and elevated temperatures on the governing failure modes and the
block shear capacity are investigated in the present work using experimental testing and finite
element analysis incorporating tensile and shear fractures simulation. In the process, the condition
for the simultaneous tensile and shear rupture mechanism is established.
Section snippets

2. Shear strain hardening in code equations for block shear

The various block shear equations given in certain specifications [6,16,17] have been
comprehensively shown to be grossly inaccurate [5,8,13,18], and are therefore not considered in
this paper. The block shear equation that has been found to be accurate for bolted connections
composed of cold-reduced sheet steel [1,5] is incorporated in the current Australasian cold-formed
steel standard [2] and the amendment to the North American
specification [3]:Rn = 0.6FyAev + FuAnt(0.9 + 0.1d/p2)in which Fy is the

3. Room (ambient) temperature

Three steel grades [19] were used for investigating the range of applicability of the two block shear
equations: S275 (mild steel) manufactured by Nisshin Steel, G500 (high strength steel) by
Bluescope Steel and S1150 (ultra-high strength steel) by SSAB. The mild and ultra-high strength
steel sheets had a nominal thickness of 1.0 mm, while the high strength steel sheet had a nominal
thickness of 1.2 mm. For each grade, two tension coupons of 25 mm gauge length and 6 mm width
were tested in

4. Specimen configurations and test set-up

The experimental program consisted of single-row and double-row bolted connections, the
configurations of which are illustrated in Fig. 4. All specimens had a bolt gage p2 = 18 mm and
edge distance e2 = 16 mm. Standard bolt holes of 7 mm were drilled for the M6 bolts of Grade 12.9,
which had a nominal tensile strength of 1220 MPa. Only the bolt shanks were in contact with the
specimens during testing.

The specimens were tested at room and elevated temperatures ranging from 200 to 700 °C. The…

5. Room (ambient) temperature

Table 3 lists the geometric variables and the professional factors of the two block shear equations
for the bolted connection specimens tested at room temperature. A professional factor is the ratio of
the ultimate test load Pt to the predicted resistance Rn. An empty cell in the tables represents the
same entry as in the above cell.

Table 3 shows that Eq. (1), which was derived based on the test results of G450 specimens [1], is
too conservative for the ductile mild steel specimens as it does…

6. Finite element investigation

Finite element analyses incorporating tensile and shear fractures simulation were used in the present
work to verify the simultaneous tensile and shear rupture mechanism and the catenary effect
observed in the experimental tests for the specimens with very low and with very high material
ductility, respectively. The finite element modelling methodology and techniques have been
described by Clements & Teh [10], Elliott & Teh [30] and Xing et al. [29].

Due to the success in past simulations, the

7. Conclusions
The most recent code equations for the block shear failure of bolted connections invariably use the
effective shear area to determine the shear resistance component. The effective shear area, being the
mean between the gross and the net shear areas, has been rigorously validated by independent
researchers in recent years through advanced finite element analyses and Digital Image Correlation
technology. However, the code equations employ different assumptions regarding the extent of
strain

CRediT author statement

YongHyun Cho: Methodology, Formal analysis, Investigation.

Lip H. Teh: Writing – Original Draft, Investigation, Supervision.
Aziz Ahmed: Formal analysis, Supervision. Ben Young: Conceptualization, Supervision, Project
administration, Funding acquisition.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships
that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments

The first and last authors are supported by a research grant from The University of Hong Kong
under the seed funding program for basic research. The test program was conducted at The
University of Hong Kong, and the use of its facilities are gratefully acknowledged. The authors
thank SSAB for providing the S1150 steel material used in this study. The third author is supported
by the Australian Research Council through the ARC Research Hub for Australian Steel
Manufacturing under the Industrial
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