A precise, novel, 3D simulation and analysis of simple bolted plates, clamped and subjected to longitudinal tensile loads

The basic idea of this paper concerns numerical investigation on the reduction in bolt clamping force of aerospace structural bolted specimens subjected to a longitudinal tensile load and introducing a novel simulation and analysis technique for the models of this type, which has been discussed and studied in a previous paper through experimentation and very simplified FE simulation. In the aforementioned experimental study two holed plates of aluminum alloy 7075- T6 were first clamped with two different tightening torques and then loaded with a longitudinal load. in the numerical method, a precise (3D) finite element simulation of the geometry of the was carried out using the new ANSYS WORKBENCH package platform, and then loaded with the same real test load magnitudes and conditions, then the clamping forces were calculated. Both results show that the bolted plate’s initial clamping force under longitudinal load reduces drastically in both of the specimens and the more the tightening torque, the more the reduction is. This may be due to the transverse reaction of the plate’s flexible material which causes the clamped material of the plate to reduce the initial compression due to clamping and release the resulting clamping force.

Keywords:

clamping force , bolted joint , numerical investigation , finite element modeling