Analysis of the behaviour of cover-plate stainless steel bolted connections

This paper is devoted to the study of the behaviour of stainless-steel bolted cover-plate connections. In fact, a 3D finite element model using Cast3m software was developed to determine the sources of local deformations of these connections, which can develop different failure modes. Particular attention was paid to the holes'ovalisation that were caused by the bolts in bearing and the deformation of the net section. A mechanical model that evaluates the initial stiffness is proposed based on a numerical one. Subsequently, a parametric study of the influence of the positions of the bolts on the resistance and deformability of the connections was carried out. A total of 60 geometric configurations of stainless-steel bolted cover-plate connections have been numerically studied. Therefore, a resistance criterion which takes into account the local deformations of the connection has been suggested.