Behavior of extended end-plate bolted connections subjected to monotonic and cyclic loads

• Published in: Engineering structures 2019-07, Vol.190, p.142-159
• Main Authors: ElSabbagh, Ashraf, Sharaf, Tarek, Nagy, Salah, ElGhandour, Mohammed
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Beam-columns; Bolted joints; Cyclic load; Cyclic loads; End plates; Finite element method; Flexible connection; Flexible connections; Head plate; Monotonic load; Nonlinear analysis; Shear forces; Steel; Steel frames; Steel structures; Stiffness
• ISSN: 0141-0296; 1873-7323
• DOI: 10.1016/j.engstruct.2019.04.016

•The value of shear acting on the connection has a significant effect.•The connection stiffness is unexpectedly gradually increase during early loading stages.•Increasing bolts diameter and/or head plate thickness enhance the behavior of the connection.•Using head plate stiffeners is very important to reduce deformations in the head plate.•Cyclic loading decreases both the moment capacity of the connection and the rotation capacity. Extended end-plate bolted connections are widely used in the steel structures as moment resisting connections. Most of these connections are flexible or in other words semi-rigid. The present research aims to study the behavior of such connections under the effect of both monotonic and cyclic loadings using the Finite Element Method (FEM). For flexible connections, it is very important to obtain the moment-rotation relationship as well as the connection stiffness. This stiffness can be used to model the flexible connections in the conventional nonlinear stiffness analysis of steel frames. Parametric study was made on extended end-plate bolted beam-column connections subjected to both monotonic and cyclic loading to study the effect of number of parameters; shear force, diameter of bolt, thickness of head plate, and the effect of using head plate stiffener. Present parametric study shows that the value of shear force acting on the connection has a significant effect on the connection stiffness.