Study on Slip Behaviour of High Strength Bolted Friction Type Joint with Extremely Thick Plates by Using Finite Element Analysis

High strength bolted friction type joints are commonly used to join members of steel bridge structures. Recently, such joints have become larger, because members of bridges tend to be large to seek structural simplicity. Since large members consist of extremely thick plates, large size joints are needed with many bolts in a line, containing thick plates including splice plates. It is of concern that many bolts and thick plates affect the slip behaviour of such large size joints. So, FEA focused on joints with many bolts and thick plates is carried out. Based on the results, it is clear that a non-uniform distribution of friction force exists. And, it is also shown that a certain combination of thicknesses of connected plates and splice plates has the large capacity of slip resistance. It is concluded that such results can be explained by the influence of the additional bending moment due to thick plates.