Fatigue Analysis of Composite Beam with Bolted Shear Connectors

This paper describes the simulation technique developed to predict the fatigue life of bolted shear connector. As existing composite structures experience complex loading conditions over the entire life of the structure, therefore, the fatigue behaviour of the shear connectors is always critical. Among different types of bolted shear connectors, the installation procedure of the blind bolts is less complex and more rapid than that of conventional systems. Therefore, the concept of fatigue analysis of the blind bolt shear connector has been presented, in this paper here in, under constant amplitudes cyclic loading, using ABAQUS/explicit and FE‐SAFE programs. All fatigue simulations were conducted under load‐control mode based on constant amplitude conditions and a constant mean force. The results showed that the number of cycles to failure decreases with the increasing stress level while every stress amplitude has a certain number of cycles until failure.