Damage and Crack Propagation Mechanism of Q345 Specimen Based on Peridynamics with Temperature and Bolt Holes

With the increasing demand for the performance and design refinement of steel structures (including houses, bridges, and infrastructure), many structures have adopted ultimate bearing capacity in service. The design service lives of steel building structures are generally more than 50 years, and most of them contain bolted connections, which suffer from extreme conditions such as fire (high temperature) during service. When the structure contains defects or cracks and bolt holes, it is easy to produce stress concentration at the defect location, which leads to crack nucleation and crack propagation, reduces the bearing capacity of the structure, and causes the collapse of the structure and causes disasters. In the process of structural damage and crack propagation, the traditional method has some disadvantages, such as stress singularity, the mesh needing to be redivided, and the crack being restricted to mesh; however, the integral method of peridynamics (PD) can completely avoid these problems. Therefore, in this paper, the constitutive equation of PD in high temperature is derived according to the variation law of steel material properties when changed by temperature increase and peridynamics parameters; the damage and crack expansion characteristics of Q345 steel specimens with bolt holes and a central double-crack at 20 °C, 200 °C, 400 °C, and 600 °C were analyzed to clarify the structural damage and failure mechanism. This study is helpful for providing theoretical support for the design of high-temperature steel structures, improving the stability of the structure, and ensuring the bearing capacity of the structure and the safety of people’s lives and property.

This creative work has been published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY 4.0) license which allows copying, and redistribution as well as adaptation of the original work provided appropriate credit is given to the original author and the conditions of the license are met.