ON THE EFFECTS OF CIRCULAR BOLT PATTERNS ON THE ...

during moderate earthquake excitation, they recommended that the bolts be designed to sustain a force
corresponding to 1.3 times a plastic moment capacity, Mp, of the beam.
Bahaari and Sherbourn [48] studied the end-plate and column flange interaction by altering the bolt
positioning. They concluded an alternative to the two rows, eight-bolt connection, and they suggested a
hybrid configuration which one four-bolt row is located above the top flange, and two rows of two-bolt are
under the beam flange.
Murray et al. [49] performed eleven experimental tests representing six different connection
configurations. The main focus of their study was to investigate the behavior of extended end-plate
moment connections with snug-tight bolts subjected to cyclic wind loading. The analytical predictions had
a good agreement with an experimental result. It was concluded that the end-plate moment connection
with snug-tight bolts slightly reduces the stiffness when compared with the fully pre-tensioned end-plate
connections.
2.4 Finite Element Analysis Of End-Plate Moment Connections
Finite element investigations on the behavior of the steel bolted connections are started as early as
1976. The majority of the early studies were focused on the correlation of the results from the 2-D
models with actual 3D specimen. Computation capability, time dependency of old computers in addition
to the substantially high cost of creating and running the 3-D model was the main reason that early
research was conducted in 2-D model. With the advancement of the computer technology, very
sophisticated 3-D models are capable of being run without a substantial penalty in computation time or
cost. Nevertheless, in spite of all these difficulties and complexities, a large number of advanced finite
element studies have been conducted on the extended end-plate connection to estimate the stiffness,
strength, and ductility of the connection for a large variety of connection geometry.
Krishnamurty et al. [50][51][52] was a pioneer to develop a finite element method for the analysis of
end-plate connections. This study was greatly limited by the technology of the time. An exhaustive
analytical study of four-bolt, un-stiffened, extended end-plates, in addition to a series of intensive
experimental investigation, leads to the development of the design procedure presented in the 3rd
14