FINITE ELEMENT SIMULATION METHODS APPLIED TO BOLTED GUSSET PLATES USED AS SHEAR CONNECTORS

Three commonly-used Finite Element simulation methods were employed to study the mechanical behavior of bolted gusset plates used as shear connectors. The calculating results, modeling complexity and simulation costs of these three methods were compared. Then the results of a simple example obtained from finite element methods were compared with those obtained from the experiments. Finally, suggestions to use the finite element method to simulate the bolted gusset plates are given. The study show that the most suggested method is the method considering contacts on the plates and applying pretension loads on the bolts. However, this method is the most complicated in modeling and requires the maximum calculating cost among the three methods. The second suggested method is to couple the nodes at the screw holes on different gusset plates. One of disadvantages of this method is that the distortion in stress and displacement on the coupling nodes is significant. The method by gluing the different gusset plates together is the worst because it will result in an excessive safe result on the connecting gusset plates.