NUMERICAL MODELLING OF THE STRUCTURAL

BEHAVIOUR OF JOINTS

N. Gebbeken
University of the Federal Armed Forces Munich
D-85577 Neubiberg, Germany

T. Wanzek
Kohler + Seitz Beraten und Planen GmbH
D-90441 Nuremberg, Germany

1 Introduction

It is the sign of the progress and it is the competition of the steel with concrete to
become more and more efficient construction which needs less material and less effort
in manufactoring leading to an optimal cost-benefit-ratio. Therefore new construction
technologies are developed. They have to be verified and the ultimate load as well as the
deformation characteristic have to be calculated. In former days it was out of question to
carry out a lot of experiments to get the significant attributes. Even if a construction
should be generalized for a broad range for each parameter combination a couple of
experiments have to be performed because of the statistical deviation. The safety factor
in the determined design criteria has to be high in order to cover uncertainties (reasons
of deviation, lack of tested combinations). Nowadays the characteristic of a construction
can be determined by finite element calculations. The devolopment of a new
construction can be done numerically. Experiments are only needed to verify numerical
results. This procedure is not as time- and cost-consuming as the pure experimental
method. Numerical parametric studies are easy to conduct, the failure mechanisms are
visible and therefore easy to study. So, the construction's safety factor perhaps can be
reduced. But the finite element calculations have to be used carefully and their results
have to be analysed critically to achieve correct qualitative as well as quantitative
answers about the tested construction. In this context the main question is: How reliable
are the numerical results?
The authors present in this paper the proceeding and different aspects which have to be
considered to achieve reliable numerical results of the simulations of end plate
connections. In addition, the experiment requirements are presented which are needed to
perform a valid numerical simulation. It is shown that a fundamental numerical study
prior to the actual calculation is as important as a detailed experimental study. A mesh
convergence study (discretization error) and the precise investigation of the influences
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c.c. Baniotopoulos and F. Wald (eds.), The Paramount Role ofJoints into the Reliable Response of Structures, 279-292.
@ 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
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of different modelling parameters is imperative in order to evaluate the reliability of the

numerical results. It has to be clarified that the finite element method is an
approximation method that may yield any big error. Here, the results of detailed
numerical studies will be presented, which also include informations about influences of
unknown experimental data (friction, imperfection). With the knowledge of these results
at hand, the Munich T -stub experiments performed by Gebbeken, Wanzek and Petersen
[4] will be simulated by finite element analyses. Then, the knowledge will be
transferred to general bolted end plate connections. The full discussion about the
experiments and the numerical studies and the background of the used brick- and
contact-elements in the finite element analyses are reported in [9].
The general method and most conclusions of this paper are also transferable to other
constructions. They can give a guide for performing reliable numerical calculations.

2 The Numerical Model

2.1 GENERAL

The initial step is to create a numerical model independent of any experiment results to
compare with. It is very important to quantify the numerical error of the used model.
This error is caused by the discretization, approximation of the material law, boundary
conditions, kind of loading etc. The error of each parameter has to be calculated, in
order to investigate the parameter sensitivity (but recognize, that the accumulation of
small errors make a big error, too). In additon, the influence of material and geometrical
deviations has to be calculated. The material deviations are yield stress, hardening
function, bolt-elongation behaviour, friction coefficients etc. Geometrical uncertainties
are e.g. plate thickness, bolt position, imperfection etc. From this number of parameter
influences it is obvious, that the calculated joint has still some probalilistic
uncertainities. But with the knowledge of the different errors of the numerical model the
response range can be estimated, in which will be included the right answer.
Finally, the numerical model has to be verified by selected experiments. These
experiments have to provide a lot of data required for finite element analyses (chapter
3.2).

2.2 DESCRIPTION OF THE USED MODEL

In the following some numerical studies are presented which have to be carried out in
order to calculate bolted end plate connections by finite element analyses. Further
information about these numerical studies can be found in Wanzek and Gebbeken [10].
The numerical studies are based on T -stub connections, because their behaviour is
similar to the behaviour of the tension zone of bolted end plate connections. Therefore,
the knowledge obtained from the numerical T -stub studies can be transferred to general
end plate connections.