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

Figure 2-3 Tension Angle Free-Body Diagram
Kennedy et al. [5][6]was a pioneer to develop a unified method for predicting the additional bolt
forces due to the prying action in the T-Stubs connection. They assumed that a T-Stubs or a bolted end-
plate goes through three stages of behavior as it is shown in Figure 1-1. The summery of these three
stages of behavior is presented in Chapter-1. They presented equations which identifies the thin and
thick plate limits based on the geometric properties of the connection, yield stress value of the plate, and
applied flange force. Ultimately, the prying forces in the bolts are calculated for each type of plate
behavior determined.
The European structure code [7] introduces the philosophy of the component-based design
methods. In this procedure, the connection is divided into several basic T-stubs and the behavior of an
isolated T-stub is related to its actual position in the connection. Figure 2-1 illustrates the decomposition
of the end-plate into basic T-stubs.
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Piluso and Rizzano [63] studied the behavior of the 28 T-stubs with two high strength bolts. The
scope of their research was to extend the design method so called component approach presented in
Eurocode 3 [7] and develop a numerical method for modeling and analyzing the T-stubs under
monotonic and cyclic loading. The displacement control load was applied to the specimens with both
constant and increasing amplitude. Using the experimental results, semi-analytical models for predicting
the cyclic behavior of the T-stubs were developed starting from the geometrical and mechanical
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